AKA Direct understands that the essential job of a fulfillment vendor is to get your material where you need it, when you need it there, at the lowest cost possible. With AKA Direct's utilization of specialized and customizable technology, experienced personnel, and strong partnerships with shipping companies, we can provide all of this and more.
DATA CAPTURE AND ANALYSIS
AKA Direct has been developing highly specialized software for fulfillment processing and database management since 1984. Our FIRM (Fulfillment-Inquiry-Response-Management) system provides the most flexible environment for capturing and tracking inquiries, prospects and customers. Highly customizable routines ensure accurate capture and analysis of critical marketing data. AKA Direct customers can go "on-line" to their marketing databases to query and analyze marketing effectiveness. In most instances, sales and marketing data is delivered electronically.
Data can be received at AKA Direct in just about any format you can come up with; as hard copy and handled by our data capture department, magnetic media or electronic input from virtually any system. All data is subject to the same audit and verification procedures to ensure clean, accurate database maintenance.
ORDER FULFILLMENT
This is where experience speaks for itself. During peak seasonal workloads, AKA Direct successfully processes well over 100,000 inquires per week and fulfills a total of over 420,000 pieces of material accurately and on time. At the same time, inventories involving well over 20 million pieces of material are maintained at above 94% accuracy with less than 3% shrinkage by volume annually. We are proud of this performance, but we're not satisfied. The challenge of fulfillment operations is constant improvement in productivity and quality control. To that end, AKA expends thousands of dollars every month in new equipment, systems development, and employee education and training. Our goal is 100% efficiency, 100% accuracy and 0% shrinkage and error.
AKA offers an integrated Inventory Management System with on-line customer access. Clients can place orders directly into the AKA Direct system via modem connection; the order is printed within minutes in the AKA Direct Fulfillment Center, and typically filled and shipped within 24 hours. AKA Direct will soon be offering these services on the web for greater convenience.
AKA Direct offers 24, 48, or 72-hour turnaround on inquiry fulfillment. SOD (Ship On Demand) orders are processed throughout the business day and are customarily guaranteed out within 48 hours. In fact, AKA ships over 80% of all SODs within 24 hours of receipt and offers "same day" rush service at a slight additional charge. All parcel shipping is fully automated, and integrated at AKA, not on standalone based PC systems requiring redundant data entry and potential for error. In addition, AKA Direct has implemented a bar code shipping label system that reduces the opportunity for misaddressed packages to be shipped.
Through our extensive relationships with most major domestic and international parcel and mail carriers, AKA Direct clients are assured the lowest-cost, appropriate transportation service available. While AKA earns substantial discounts on prevailing rates from many carriers, all savings are passed on directly to our customers - often as much as 40% off of published rates.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
AKA Direct offers complete material handling, warehousing and inventory control services to fulfillment customers. In addition to standard warehousing services, AKA Direct offers secured warehouse storage for valuable products and materials. The secured warehouse is maintained under heightened security with access limited to authorized personnel, regardless of the type of warehousing.
AKA Direct offers unit priced warehousing charges rather than lumping everything into "pallet positions". AKA Direct's Fulfillment Bin System was designed to allow for the most efficient storage and retrieval of fulfillment material warehoused. All warehousing charges are based on the "bin" system, which eliminates the flat "per pallet" rate that can penalize you when you have a high number of SKU's but small quantities of material in each. By special arrangement, large bulk quantities of palletized materials can be stored by AKA Direct on a "per pallet" basis. The "dead stock" warehousing presumes that such material does not require regular, frequent or immediate access.
AKA Direct inspects all incoming shipments for damage, verify the material in the shipment and pull samples for the customer service representative. Any discrepancies are brought to the immediate attention of our clients. At time of receipt, AKA Direct updates the appropriate client's inventory databases so that the client will see close to "real time" inventory counts. And with AKA Direct's on-line inventory management systems, clients can access this information whenever they need to.
To contact AKA Direct for further information on our fulfillment and inventory management services, please click here.
