F. Curtis Barry & Company’s Multichannel Operations & Fulfillment Blog

Cost Reduction and Productivity Improvement Assessment
70+ Ways to Reduce Costs, Increase Productivity and Improve Customer Service
By Curt Barry
Over the past 23 years F. Curtis Barry & Company’s work with multichannel companies in operations and fulfillment consulting has allowed us to compile these 70+ ways that can cut costs and increase productivity, which will ultimately lead […]

The F. Curtis Barry & Company and Catalog Success’ co-branded two-day interactive systems workshop, “Evaluating, Selecting and Implementing Direct Commerce Systems” has added a new twist to the registration for this workshop.
The first 20 registrants for the systems workshop will receive a discount of $100 off the registration fee of $795. The spots are filling […]

During a session I led at last week’s National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Orlando, Fla., I identified several critical mistakes businesses make in their systems selection processes, regardless of the type of system. These include distributed control systems, order management systems (OMS), warehouse management systems (WMS), e-commerce or similar ones.
Among the mistakes I […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Upcoming solution will bring together multiple data sources to analyze business performance, aid merchandise analysis, analyze productivity in call centers and fulfillment centers
Redwood City, CA, and Richmond, VA; April 2, 2008 –
For 20 years, Taurus Software has been “making data liquid” for over 700 companies world-wide, with over 80 clients being in the […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Richmond, VA, & Philadelphia, PA, April 7, 2008 — F. Curtis Barry & Company, a leading consultancy to multichannel businesses, in partnership with Catalog Success, the leading publication serving the catalog/multichannel business, today jointly announced a co-branded two-day interactive workshop, “Evaluating, Selecting and Implementing Direct Commerce Systems.”
“The software marketplace for today’s multichannel direct […]

This is a question that needs to be asked because of some recent trends. Consider:
1. Production chases low cost labor. Where Japan and Taiwan were the centers before China, production is starting to move from China to other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia—as well as Mexico, Central and South […]

Press Release sent to us from IFSO
San Francisco, CA, March 4, 2008: Forerunner Systems Inc. announced the general release of IFSO 4.0. IF/SO® - The Inventory Forecaster, provides inventory forecasting and stock optimization solutions to the direct commerce industry, helping catalog and e-commerce companies improve customer fulfillment, reduce backorders and optimize the liquidation […]

So many changes continually take place with regards to order management systems that it is difficult to keep up with them unless you’re doing it full time. So many choices: Sigma Micro announcing plans for Software as a Service and acquiring 3rd party fulfillment provider Stark Bros.; Avexxis offering an “off the shelf” version that […]

This past week, I had a call from a multichannel company about why their order management system selection process had failed. In their case, they signed the vendor agreements prematurely only to find out that the bid was incomplete. There weren’t any estimates for modifications, interfaces, conversion and training. As a result they had been […]

A couple of weeks ago we hosted 23 of Stone Edge Technologies’ customers at our two-day seminar, How to Improve Fulfillment and Operations. For those of you who don’t know Stone Edge, they sell an order management system for small to moderate sized direct businesses. They have over 1600 customers, second only to Dydacomp. I […]