The Q4 Operational Checklist | Cin7

Q4 is next month, and you’ve already ticked all the boxes on your operational preparedness checklist.

Technology stack synced? Check.

3PL connected? Check.

Reporting up, running, and accurate? Check. Check. Check.

You’ve also ordered stock, organized your warehouses, and secured logistics partners.

Confidence that you’ve done everything you need to make this quarter the most profitable and efficient one yet is high. But your confidence may be writing checks your business can’t cash.

What do we mean by that? We mean that your checklist, while effective, is missing a critical component: prepared team members.

We've found that people, not just technology, can make or break a business.

Your team members run your business. They bring your mission to life. They’re the concrete foundation upon which your business rests.

But concrete can crack when it’s not properly reinforced.

Your team may crumble, and your business with it, if you don’t ensure that your team trusts, understands, and knows how to use your system before Q4 gets here. And knowing what they think and how they feel requires a different kind of checklist.

The people kind.

The People Checklist: What “Ready” Actually Looks Like

A people-centered Q4 checklist is simple. Every box centers on team members’ system readiness. So they know exactly what they’re doing.

The following questions should be included in your people checklist:

• Does your team know what to do when the system flags something instead of just what to do when everything is working properly? It’s one thing to show your team members how to click through a system and another thing to show them how the system can be used to fix the problems that will crop up. Teaching your team how to fully use the tools they’ve been given can help put you at the top of the leader board.
• Has anyone actually used the system during a volume spike or only during normal months? The peak season surge is something every product business looks forward to. Yet, no matter how well trained, your team members may become overwhelmed when faced with order volumes they’ve never seen. Whether they sink or swim will be based on how well you prepare them before Q4 happens.
• Is there one person who understands the whole flow or is knowledge spread out enough that Q4 doesn't fall apart if someone isn’t there? The saying “no man is an island” means that people need people to survive. Same goes for a business. Reliance on a single employee, making them your technology guru, can stall momentum if they fall ill or leave during peak season. Training multiple people on key workflows, especially if multiple departments are involved, will keep the wheels rolling and from falling off.
• Have new channels or warehouses added this year actually been tested at real volume or just set up? Adding new channels and warehouses is a sure sign of business growth, but these additions need to be stress tested before Q4 lands. The middle of the storm is not the time to find out that your life raft has a hole in it.
• Are sales/warehouse growth and seasonal demand being monitored? Keeping track of growth and demand is essential as your business picks up steam. Your team should know what flags to watch for when it comes to increased inventory and staffing needs.

The People Checklist in Action: Going From Unprepared to Unbeatable

Checklists provide black-and-white steps that ensure a process runs the way it was designed to and deliver benefits many businesses only dream about. This was the case for Sanzo.

A purveyor of naturally sweetened sparkling beverages with Asian-inspired flavors, Sanzo began in 2019. By 2022, its product was on the shelves in Whole Foods and Sprouts stores as well as in most Panda Express restaurants across the U.S.

Sanzo’s phenomenal growth increased production, required expanded trucking capacity, and expanded its employee headcount. But managing growth of this magnitude with Excel spreadsheets, including the need to manually translate PDF and EDI-sourced POs into internal Excel spreadsheets and processes, was taking its toll.

“It was a mess,” says Sanzo’s Director of Operations, Sean Young. “When you’re relying on manual inputs across multiple team members from different source data, things become a little messy and harder to keep track of.”

Seeing the cracks in its foundation, Sanzo sought out a centralized IMS. Sean and the team selected Cin7 and did much of the implementation work themselves. But not all of it. They had assistance from a Cin7 onboarding rep and, yes, Cin7’s structured preparation checklists.

“[There were] no major headaches, and we obviously learned along the way. We had enough interaction with the Cin7 platform, including replicating past orders to get a better feel for Cin7, to make go live less daunting,” Sean says, adding that Cin7 has become the backbone of their operations, finance, and accounting functions.

“It’s ability to integrate with our vital applications and to act as an intermediary to help translate and pass along data to all the resources we use outside of Cin7 is key.”

Now, instead of putting out fires, the team funnels their energy into improving efficiency and driving growth by making intelligent decisions based on Cin7’s trustworthy data. They also can leverage Cin7 Academy and Cin7’s documentation tools to help ease new hire training and onboarding. And with Cin7, the team is supremely confident they can handle anything peak season throws at them.

“Cin7 is helping us get out of the weeds of day-to-day tasks so our team can focus on long-term, strategic initiatives that will enable us to scale effectively.”

Automated Inventory Systems and Human-Side Checks: Both Are Necessary

Your team’s Q4 readiness does not hinge solely on having a working, proficient automated inventory system. Each team member needs to know how the system works. And that they can trust it. For accuracy. For its ability to help them do their jobs. For making peak season something they want to run to, not away from.

When you ask yourself, “Is my team trained to use the system for daily work (including end-to-end testing of all new or existing workflows) and to solve problems, can we continue operating if someone is out during peak season, have we stress-tested new channels, warehouses, and SKUs at volume and made sure we started with accurate stock counts,” the answers may surprise you.

And surprises aren’t always good. Especially when they come in Q4.

Your system may be ready, but your team? They may not be. Now, not Q4, is the time to find out.