With the prior programs in place, your outbound shipping process now has considerably more stress than it did before. You need to meet fast delivery dates usually priced as free.

Whenever operations is up against these types of constraints, we see an attempt to simplify process at the expense of costs. As a result, costs balloon and margins are destroyed. A simple example: A customer is expecting a package delivered in three days for free, so the shipping method picked goes by carrier SLA and you choose the expensive FedEx 2-Day Air option. That's an easy policy to scale.

It's at this point you need to prioritize cost-based decision making. We like to say "Constrain on speed, optimize for cost." It is a bad idea to progress to other growth initiatives, like opening a new FC, without prioritizing the latter half of that statement and get costs under control.

The best way to solve it is with data science. There are a lot of situations where costs can be cut, but it required sophisticated software and data modeling.