How ShipCalm Resolved Its Growth Pains by Streamlining Its Business Processes

Last Updated on April 29, 2021 by Owen McGab Enaohwo

The CEO of ShipCalm, Ted Fogliani, has always been process-driven. He was keen on streamlining the operations at ShipCalm when he founded the company, but all the tools he came across initially did not meet up to his standards. They fell short in one area or the other. The absence of an effective system was also telling on his employees’ efficiency as they had limited information to execute tasks.

Ted continued to search for the right system, and when he found SweetProcess, he knew that the software was what he needed. He tells us about how SweetProcess has facilitated growth and employee efficiency in his organization.

About ShipCalm

ShipCalm is an e-commerce focused logistics company. It offers fulfillment services via an omnichannel, shipping directly to consumers and retailers. 

Established in 2016, the company has built strong partnerships across the industry with e-commerce giants such as Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. on its list, and leverages its network to provide the best delivery services to customers. Any issues encountered are resolved in the shortest time possible.

As a third-party logistics company, the organization stores products in a warehouse and ships them to consumers who order them as soon as possible. It channels its software systems and employees toward enhancing the customer experience. 

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The Biggest Concern

Ted reveals that one of the greatest rules in his line of business is that you do not do anything without work instructions. He and his team members relied heavily on work instructions to be efficient. Their growing customer base came with several challenges that were difficult to manage in the absence of a solid workflow system.

Both his employees and the facilities were getting stretched beyond their limits. He needed to fix it immediately before it got out of hand.

“Every company faces growing pains. SweetProcess has been a way for us to manage the growing pains. No company should ever tell you they never had growing pains. In this economy, and what’s going on with COVID, we are growing, and it has pains to come along with it. Your systems get stretched and your people get stretched and your facilities get stretched.” 

Choosing SweetProcess out of the Lot

Ted was familiar with workflow systems due to his years of experience in the construction industry. Having used several systems previously, he knew exactly what he needed when he moved onto the e-commerce logistics terrain. 

Creating an enabling work environment for his employees and satisfying his customers were top on Ted’s agenda, so he sought a workflow tool that would enable him to achieve them. A trial of SweetProcess was all the convincing he needed that he had found the right system. 

“I had been hunting for years for something that was easy to do, and the thing that got me attracted to SweetProcess was that writing revision one of the procedures is the easiest thing in the market. I’ve looked at them all. Writing revision one was the easiest thing to do with these guys.”

Taken by the ease of writing revision in SweetProcess, Ted signed up for SweetProcess to enjoy the many other benefits that the system offers. 

How SweetProcess Improved the Operations at ShipCalm

Picking SweetProcess out of the many workflow tools on the market, Ted and his team understandably had high expectations for implementing it. Did it meet their expectations? We get to find out as Ted tells us more about some of the specific ways they are using the tool in his company. 

1. Employee Training and Onboarding

Employees’ performance in an organization is a reflection of the organization’s capabilities. When employees underperform in handling clients’ projects, the organization takes the fall. Ted makes sure that his employees are properly trained on the tasks they are handling before they get to work. Thanks to SweetProcess, he can track their training and assess their competence.

“I can assign people to be trained on tasks and I can track that training. I come from manufacturing medical devices where I actually had to prove to the FDA that my people touching it were approved. 

Ted does not have the FDA requirement in his current business, but tracking employees’ training on tasks can be used as proof to customers who want to be assured of the competence of team members who are handling their work. 

“If I was a customer of mine, I would say, ‘Hey, how do I know that Mike knows how to do my stuff?’ and I can say, ‘Oh well, Mike’s been trained on it. Here, he had an hour and a half, it was tracked. Here’s Mike signing off on it…’ It’s nice to know that Mike’s been trained, and that Mike’s read the procedure.”

SweetProcess is also helpful in the organization’s employee onboarding as new employees can be directed to the SOPs in the system to learn all they need to know.

“The learning curve on SweetProcess is the number of hours or days. It’s not a number of weeks, which is rare for a software implementation…. Because a lot of people can use SweetProcess in my environment, most people can use those tools for the onboarding process and so it’s a very simple integration for us.”

2. Business Process Documentation

The best standard operating procedures are those that are easy to use—Ted understood this having worked with SOPs on his previous job. When he set out to find a workflow tool to implement in his own business, ease of use was one of the features that he was looking out for. 

“We could write a work instruction in three minutes and my requirement in our environment is you don’t do anything without a work instruction…. With SweetProcess, it takes two minutes. I don’t need the perfect version. I need version one and it’s without even a template.”

It was also important to Ted that his team members were able to use the system without getting confused, and he found that in SweetProcess.

“I wanted to be able to write a procedure quickly and I wanted anybody with a reasonable training skill set who could type to be able to do one very easily.”

3. Employee and Customers’ Knowledge Bases

The flow of information in an organization can be imbalanced in the absence of a go-to knowledge base. Bits of information are passed between privileged employees, leaving the others in the dark, and they are unable to perform certain tasks when the need arises.

With SweetProcess, the company now has a central knowledge base for its employees. The information they need for any tasks is just a click away.

SweetProcess also offers a knowledge base to their customers. Some customers are specific about their shipment needs. Ted and his team created a customer knowledge base out of customer feedback to improve the user experience.  

“I want the customers to see what we’re doing. I want to make sure nothing’s been lost in translation, and so we have taken those processes and we have put them into the knowledge base section of SweetProcess to where our customers have access to that.” 

4. Shared User Experience

According to Ted, the biggest game-changer of using SweetProcess is the ability to share his customers’ desired user experience with them using the system’s visual aid. Customers can see exactly what is being done for themselves to get a sense of it. 

“It’s the ability to use a picture quickly to share to our operators that this is what it’s supposed to look like when it shows…that’s one that just pops into my head. It’s like the procedure has a picture. You, the operator, just took the picture, and look at that, it’s right there and it’s a link so it’s updatable. You don’t end up with rigid unchangeable work instruction. You can actually rev it easily.”

The Next Big Goal

The organization mostly engages with its customers via phone calls and emails, but it acknowledges the importance of meeting with them in person. Ted and his team are working toward developing e-commerce brand centers where they can engage and with their customers physically. 

Something for You

You have read how Ted was able to manage the pain points of growth in his organization by streamlining his business operations with SweetProcess—the story is the same for the many businesses that have implemented the software.

If you are looking to take your business to the next level, streamlining your operations is a good place to start.

Check out SweetProcess and sign up for a 14-day free trial—you do not need a credit card to get started. 

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