Campus logistics is one of the most dynamic jobs, and with the coronavirus pandemic creating a fluctuating environment for many campuses, central receiving managers are forced to roll with the punches. As universities begin to prepare for an in-person school year this fall, upgrading your central receiving software and equipment is a must. Thankfully, our team has crafted a comprehensive campus logistics software solution, Intra EDU, that can be configured to fit your unique pain points. Here, our central receiving solution experts provide an overview of the top KPIs and SLAs for your team to monitor, and how Intra can streamline these processes and foster success.

Understanding the Inner Workings of Your Warehouse

Prior to establishing specific KPIs related to efficiency and revenue, you must first be able to monitor more general KPIs and SLAs that connect to many other daily tasks within your warehouse. For central receiving managers, these include total inbound and outbound packages processed, downtime per package, and time to deliver. With Intra EDU, your team will have greater oversight of the inner workings of your warehouse, helping you to strategize, adapt, and ultimately increase revenue.

Total Inbound & Outbound Packages Processed  

When it comes to central receiving, understanding the total number of inbound and outbound packages processed is vital to success. It is likely that your university is quite large, and without modern equipment and software, you are not able to manage efficiently without having data on parcels processed per day, week, month, quarter, or year. Measuring this metric as a KPI is a great way to both streamline daily workflows and save money. For example, if you can pinpoint that you have a significantly high number of packages coming in and out during a certain period throughout the school year, you are then able to adjust scheduling for peak times, such as move-in or move-out, to improve efficiency. As it relates to SLAs, this is also a great metric to provide to relevant third parties, showing that your team can handle many packages and deliver accordingly with little to no error.

Downtime Per Package

After understanding just how many packages your warehouse handles, it’s time to research your team’s efficiency and organization standards. As a central receiving manager, searching through an unorganized warehouse space is nothing short of a nightmare, especially during peak times. The more time your employees spend looking for packages, the more money you lose, and as a result, the relationships you’ve made with students and faculty may suffer. Agitation ensues, and a cycle of inefficiency begins. As an SLA, this holds your team accountable for setting a minimum and maximum downtime per package when working with third parties.

Time to Deliver

With any mailroom or warehouse, time to deliver is an important KPI and SLA to monitor, as it provides a way to identify gaps in your workflow. Whether these problems are through routes or delivery agents, knowing time to deliver across various areas of campus can help you adjust your delivery strategy to provide students and faculty with the fastest delivery times. Additionally, if you use a third-party delivery service, you can adjust SLAs accordingly if they are not meeting their minimum requirements.

Maximizing Your Warehouse Storage Space

One thing is certain when it comes to being a central receiving manager – every inch of storage space is precious. Depending on the size of your facility, you may find yourself adjusting the layout and organization of packages more than you would like. Especially if you do not have software that allows for insight into incoming packages in the near future, your team is working reactively each day to accommodate fluctuating package volumes. The following KPIs and SLAs are important to monitor to ensure maximum efficiency for your team and warehouse.

Total Students & Faculty Served

Total students and faculty served is a KPI that should never be looked over, as this provides insight into so many areas of your facility. Not only does this allow you to calculate how much storage space you should have in relation to the students and faculty present on campus, but also provides concrete data on student and faculty population growth for you to bring to stakeholders. For example, if you can show university superiors extensive attendance spikes in the past year or two, you are then able to discuss and negotiate additional resources or space as needed, with data in hand. Furthermore, if your team has been able to maintain or even improve efficiency during these spikes, university stakeholders may be more likely to increase your team’s budget and resources based on previous success.

Available & Taken Storage Space

Used as a way to help your team work proactively, knowing available and taken storage space at any given time helps your team maximize space use and revenue. As a central receiving manager, it is your job to understand and evaluate each report that comes through in order to best strategize future goals for your team. With Intra EDU’s Central Receiving Workgroup, you are able to easily pull reports that show locations in which assets have filled that space, as well as where no assets have been placed yet. You are then able to plan with your team to figure out how you are going to fill these spaces ahead of time to maximize storage space.

Time in Storage

When considering storage space as a KPI and SLA, you should also be aware of not just how much storage space you have, but how much time packages are kept in storage. If there is not a way to track time spent in storage, packages may be taking up excessive space for weeks, months, or even an entire school year with no one coming to pick them up. If you discover that the average time for packages spent in storage is high, you may need to adjust SLAs with your university and other relevant parties to determine the maximum time allowed for packages in storage before they are moved. By having an innovative software solution such as Intra EDU, you can run reports at the end of each billing cycle to determine which account numbers you should bill for passing the maximum days of storage, generating revenue for your department.

Earning Consistent Revenue for Your Central Receiving Department

After understanding the gaps in your central receiving department and taking actionable change to improve, you can now focus on what keeps your department growing each year, revenue! In many receiving and warehouse settings, facilities managers and central receiving managers must find creative ways to obtain revenue for their departments in order to function efficiently. With COVID-19 halting many in-person revenue streams for central receiving managers, you are now making up for lost time. KPIs and SLAs such as cost per package, departmental cost for storage, and available surplus all play key roles in determining yearly revenue for your central receiving department. It’s our job to make sure that you are able to maximize this revenue with ease.

Cost Per Package

The main goal of measuring cost per package is to understand the return on investment for your department. Determining cost per package can help your team highlight gaps in your workflow, and where you can adjust your time and money spent to minimize the cost per package. Additionally, this helps with SLAs by giving you the chance to promote your services with minimal cost to the end-users.

Departmental Cost for Storage

Another KPI specific to central receiving managers is departmental cost for storage. Depending on the university you work at, departmental storage may vary greatly. For schools heavily based in STEM programs, technology and other assets for science and math departments may take up most of your warehouse. However, if you are working at a large state school with a variety of popular fields, departmental storage may be more evenly split. By determining how much it is costing you to hold each department’s assets, you are then able to create accurate invoices and ensure that each department is paying accordingly.

This can also be used with SLAs for each department to determine the maximum amount of assets they are able to store at one time without additional charges. Looking long-term, if departments must continue to pay these charges, you are able to provide insights for university stakeholders about allocating additional space for the central receiving department.

Available Surplus

Finally, one creative way to generate revenue is to sell surplus items. If you have older, unused assets, consider speaking to your campus and relevant departments about selling surplus items. This frees up space for new packages/assets each year and depending on the quality of the asset, can lead to a large amount of revenue for your team. As a KPI, this shows how efficient your facility is at generating revenue, which you can then use to request additional resources or manpower. As an SLA, this can be used for departmental asset use maximums and allows you to create additional SLAs with outside parties that may want to purchase your surplus assets.

How SCLogic’s Central Receiving Workgroup is Changing the Game

As a central receiving manager, this past year has surely been a whirlwind. From frequent capacity changes to campus restrictions, your team has likely struggled to keep up. We completely understand, which is why we’ve made it our priority to provide a slew of innovative solutions for your team. From customized workflows to modern integrations like intelligent lockers and kiosks, we want to make sure this year runs as smoothly as possible for your team. With many students returning to campus this coming fall, there is no better time to invest in upgrades for your campus than now. To see how Intra can streamline your daily tasks, improve workflows, and maximize revenue for your central receiving team, contact [email protected] or schedule a demo with us today!

We look forward to hearing from you!