6 strategies to automate your operations
Originally published: https://www.fulfil.io/blog/strategies-automate-operations
If you’re looking to go all Department of Government Efficiency on your brand in 2025, a core element of this will be identifying opportunities to automate aspects of your operations. We asked DTC operations experts for their advice on how to automate eCommerce operations.
Key takeaways
Define your automation goals first - identify specific problems you're trying to solve before investing in tools.
Which tasks take the most time?
What would directly improve customer experience?
How can you upskill employees through automation?
Start with document processing - use AI tools to handle invoices, POs, and packing lists.
Enable customer self-service - let them edit orders, addresses, and quantities themselves.
Centralize inventory management - especially if selling across multiple channels.
Identify manual data entry points in your processes and prioritize automating these to reduce errors.
Get clear on your goals
It’s critical to understand what you’re trying to accomplish before rushing into buying software or using AI for the sake of it. Ask yourself: what problems are you trying to solve? Do you need an ERP? Do you need to adjust existing processes? This cross-functional alignment and clarity will ensure you don’t overengineer a solution that ends up being overkill or slowing you down.
“Companies often get distracted by shiny new software or AI tools that don’t deliver meaningful results. When considering automation, I advise brands to first define what success looks like. By understanding the ideal outcome, they can determine whether a process needs reform or automation.” - Aaron Alpeter, Founder at Izba consulting.
Think about the future
There are different aspects to consider when it comes to automation. The quickest wins often present themselves in the form of time savings, trimming tedious processes that used to take hours to be completed in minutes. Approaching automation from the lens of employee upskilling and customer experience can elevate automation to the next level and set you up for long-term success, enabling you to consider new opportunities beyond immediate time and cost savings.
"Something most people get wrong: automation isn't about time savings, it's about leverage. What's going to make your product experience feel like unforgettable magic to your customer?
Automating a 20 hour/week task might save you $10ks/year. But creating one new personalized experience might generate millions of new LTV.
Replacing an employee with an AI script might save some money, too. But teaching that employee to implement automation themselves could unlock their creativity in ways that compound over time.
Rank your automation priorities by leverage and future upside, not cost." - Charles Cushing, Founder at StartOps.
Use AI to contextualize data
Working across different systems and juggling different file formats can lead to manual work. This takes time away from strategic thinking and can lead to important insights getting swept under the rug. Leveraging AI to contextualize unstructured data can empower your team to save time and make informed decisions.
"I constantly see tools over-deliver when it comes to their AI capabilities, but one area where I am confident brands can practically weave AI into their day-to-day operations is through document parsing. Dealing with the unstructured data that lives in PDFs (commercial and freight invoices, POs, packing lists, etc.) is such a headache, but AI can really elegantly parse and contextualize that data for operators. This is a huge unlock when it comes to cutting down on tedious manual work." - Alex Yaseen, CEO at Parabola.
Let customers self-edit orders
As an omnichannel brand that needs to manage orders across channels, it can be challenging to keep up with the volume of support tickets. There’s a lot of talk in the industry about leveraging AI support agents, but why not empower customers to edit their own orders? This can reduce support ticket volume and create an additional touchpoint in the customer journey for a potential post-purchase upsell.
"It's hands down enabling customers to self-service edits to their orders. Instead of manually handling processes like address changes, applying coupon codes, changing variants, and adjusting quantities - let customers do it themselves. Free up time for your customer service team, reduce the likelihood of returns and failed deliveries, and increase your margin per order by letting customers add additional items to their order for a short period after purchase." -Hamish McKay, Co-Founder at OrderEditing.
Consolidate inventory across channels
It can be challenging to not run out of inventory when selling across multiple channels. This is often exacerbated when storing inventory across multiple warehouses. Consolidating inventory for on- and off-Amazon orders is a great way to reduce customer wait times and help automate the fulfillment of orders by drawing from the same pool of inventory.
“Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) by Amazon enhances operational efficiency and automates processes by centralizing inventory management across various sales channels while utilizing Amazon's advanced fulfillment network. Businesses using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) gain additional benefits from MCF, including improved inventory turnover and reduced out-of-stock incidents. This comprehensive solution allows brands to leverage Amazon's expertise in logistics, minimize manual intervention, and optimize their supply chain, enabling them to focus on growth strategies while ensuring efficient, reliable order fulfillment across multiple platforms.” - Adam Froelich, Sr. Tech BD Manager at Amazon.
Reduce opportunities for human error
Every time someone needs to enter data in a spreadsheet or click a button, the room for human error increases. Identifying opportunities to eliminate manual intervention through automated rate shopping, printing shipping labels, or data entry can not only save you time but also reduce risk.
“While supply chains are rapidly evolving in part due to a changing geo-political landscape, operators today have a plethora of tools to streamline data, generate insights and gain visibility into their operations. For example, I have seen brands leverage AI tools to summarize information in historically challenging documents like PDFs, so they can extract key data from vendor documents, validate pricing and quantities against master data, automate data entry into their ERP system, send confirmations to vendors and flag exceptions. These tools eliminate manual data entry, reduce errors, speed up processing time, and free up resources for higher-value work.” - Matt Hertz, Founder at Third Person.
Building your automation roadmap
Exploring new ways to drive efficiencies in your business isn’t a one-time exercise. Adopting a continuous improvement mindset is key to enabling your team to level up your operations as you scale. Keep this in mind as the year progresses and drop our team a note if you’re looking for help identifying additional opportunities to drive efficiencies in your business.
