The holiday rush, Black Friday crowds, and back-to-school shopping—nothing strikes a nerve for retail ops teams like peak seasons.
As order volumes skyrocket and customer expectations are equally sky-high, how can retailers maintain smooth delivery operations when demand suddenly surges?
The answer lies in smart delivery orchestration.
Intelligent orchestration platforms can help you seamlessly manage multiple delivery providers, automatically route orders to the best DSP, and maintain real-time visibility across your entire fulfillment network—without adding operational complexity.
In this article, ops teams from several leading retailers share their tips on leveraging intelligent orchestration platforms to turn seasonal challenges into opportunities to provide an exceptional brand experience.
Building a flexible foundation
Offering same-day or next-day delivery is no longer a customer benefit but an expectation.
Customers may not want to order the same way every time. This can especially happen during peak seasons, when customers may opt for other last-mile solutions to receive their orders. After all, who hasn't avoided going to the mall between Black Friday and New Year's?
The key lies in flexibility as "[customers] may want to buy it online and go pick it up in the store," Brittany Pacheco, Senior Omni Channel Manager at Office Depot, explained, "They may want it immediately. Maybe they don't need it 'till tomorrow and a local store can source it right to them because we don't have it available in our distribution center."
(read the full exclusive interview with Brittany in our Office Depot story.)
Offering all these options is one thing, but scaling your capacity up and down based on demand is at the core of smart orchestration. This level of flexibility starts with having the right technological foundation in place.
With the right delivery orchestration platform, you can maintain consistent service levels even during volume spikes and even build in business rules to optimize for peak period requirements.
Emily Felix, Senior Analyst at Belk told us "We have significantly grown our same-day delivery program because of what we're able to do, because we're able to have multiple DSPs and put those business rules in place to drive profitability to our program."
(read the full exclusive interview with Emily Felix, Sr. Analyst at Belk.)
Protecting against delivery disruptions
Peak seasons magnify the risks of relying on a single delivery provider, especially if that is your own fleet of delivery vehicles. Weather events, labor shortages, or technical issues can bring operations to a half at the worst possible moment.
Jenny Pearson of grocery store chain Lunds and Byerlys relayed these struggles when they had their own internal fleet. "We were constantly worried about trucks and drivers. We were trying to replace drivers when they were leaving or fill in for sick drivers. We were just trying to maintain stability within our delivery and it took a lot of time and there were a lot of obstacles."
(read the full exclusive interview with Jenny Pearson, Director of E-Commerce at Lunds and Byerlys.)
And that was during their normal periods of business. Holidays, especially those that traditionally involved large meals, made these delivery worries even worse.
Finally, when the pressure became too much, Lunds & Byerlys decided to switch to using a smart orchestration platform to work with a variety of external delivery partners. As Jenny explained it "we decided we just needed to take all of our eggs out of the basket and kind of spread them around a little bit."
Working with even one external DSP had an immediate impact on peace of mind. Working with multiple DSPs has an additional benefit of being able to mitigate the risk of working with these external partners.
Like any industry in the gig economy, the DSP landscape changes rapidly, with providers entering and existing markets regularly. This isn't too uncommon as there was one incident where a delivery provider ceased operations seemingly overnight.
Similarly, providers are using services like InsureShield® shipping insurance to cover loss, damage, and porch pirated theft across all carriers and modes. This way, no matter which DSP handles the last mile, retailers can be confident that their peak season deliveries are protected.
Maintaining control through intelligence
When volume surges, maintaining control isn't just about having multiple providers—it's about orchestrating them intelligently.
As Jenny from Lunds & Byerlys said, "We're able to see where all of the drivers are. Our customers can track the drivers, we can track the drivers. If there's an issue, we can see where that might have occurred." Beyond basic tracking, other solutions like DeliveryDefense™ shipping intelligence provide confidence scoring to help identify addresses that could have a higher risk of loss or theft and enhanced visibility of your shipments through real-time multi-carrier tracking, monitoring, and analytics.
Rebecca Berger, Senior Product Manager at Delivery Solutions, notes that orchestration rules help "select a provider ahead of time by setting these rules for those order types that come through," ensuring reliable execution even as volume surges.
When peak seasons hit, these rules become crucial.
From the customer's standpoint, they may not even be worried about cost. They'll simply be looking at who can get them the product they're looking at in the timeframe they're looking for.l Smart orchestration ensures you can maintain service levels while automatically adapting to changing conditions.
Having the ability to bundle or add in multiple DSPs to "compete with each other, has been really beneficial," Liz Cain, Director of Stores at Salon Service Group mentioned, "it's allowed us to extend our delivery mile radius. Initially, we would deliver up to 15 miles and we started analyzing the data and noticed that we had an opportunity to extend our delivery radius."
(Read the full SSG story in our exclusive interview with Liz Cain, Director of Stores.)
Smart delivery orchestration helps handle demand surges
With the right orchestration platform, retailers can build flexible, resilient delivery operations that scale smoothly to meet demand spikes while maintaining exceptional customer service.
Having systems that provide both automation to handle routine operations and intelligence to manage exceptions is at the core of what makes this work.
This combination lets retailers focus on delighting customers rather than fighting fires during their busiest periods.
Ryan Caldarone
Ryan is a Sr. Digital Marketing Manager with over ten years of experience in B2B eCommerce, specializing in brand storytelling and content. Having contributed to hundreds of creative projects for SMBs and startups across the tech, energy, and fine arts sectors, Ryan brings diverse perspectives.