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When Beer, Beverage, and FoodService distributors evaluate technologies designed to improve warehouse and delivery operations, the conversation often overlooks the topic of picking accuracy because a case-level accuracy of 99% to 99.5% is often seen as either good enough or as good as possible. What they often fail to connect is that even a case inaccuracy as small as 0.5%, across a typical annual case volume of 5 million cases, still yields 25,000 cases misdelivered that year. These small leaks threaten two strategic objectives that a distributor must have to dramatically decrease delivery times and change the paradigm of their business: Building Trust through Order Accuracy & Providing Order Visibility
Objective 1: Building Trust through Accuracy
Leaving a package at your door is now standard practice because delivery accuracy by Amazon and other major carriers is so accurate that you trust these companies to do so; the world of signing for a package is few and far between. This saves significant time for you and for the carrier, and most importantly, you don’t have to take a pause from your current activity to go accept the package.
Unfortunately, most deliveries between a distributor and retailer don’t happen this way. Instead, drivers must wait for a clerk to become available for a check-in, clerks must step away from helping customers, and cases get scanned-in one by one. The process can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes or longer, and remains the standard practice because clerks regularly find errors on pallets. Other retailers offer a lower touch option of ASN (Advanced Shipping Notice) check-in, which, simply put, this method forgoes case-by-case scanning and (in theory) saves significant time, but requires distributors to maintain accuracy at near-perfect levels to stay on the program. Maintaining this accuracy requires dedicated manual labor and focus that is difficult to scale as more retailers shift to ASN-based delivery. An alternative to manual labor involves investing in a range of technology options aimed at increasing picking accuracy: picker case-count confirmation tools, conveyor systems based on weight or dimensional checking, and computer vision (AI) -based tools that factor in brand and package type in addition to weight and case count. Only the latter, using multi-factor checking, provides a way to check every pallet for errors and ship pallets at 99.99% case-level accuracy for ASN accounts and for every other retailer including independent and mom and pop stores that make up the long tail of deliveries each day. Moving from 99.5% to 99.99% shrinks case errors from 25,000 in our example to 500 instead. More importantly, it’s a critical step for a distributor to build trust with retailers.
Objective 2: Providing Order Visibility
Once accuracy is performing at a virtually perfect level (99.99%), there is still tremendous value to be gained by collecting images of each pallet and making them easily accessible for review. The reason is simple: accuracy tells you whether an order is correct, but visibility tells both parties, the distributor and the retailer, what actually happened.
For years, when a retailer questioned a delivery, distributors were forced to piece together information from multiple sources. Teams reviewed paperwork, checked security footage, spoke with drivers, and tried to reconstruct events after the fact. Even when everyone involved believed the order had been delivered correctly, proving it could take significant time and effort. What many distributors are discovering is that having a documented visual record of what was picked, loaded, and delivered fundamentally changes that process. Rather than relying on assumptions, memory, or conflicting accounts, both the distributor and the retailer have access to the same information. Instead of spending hours investigating a claim, teams can often find answers in minutes by searching the historical archive of pallet images collected in the warehouse and at delivery by pallet identification number. That creates value regardless of whether a mistake occurred because the real benefit is not simply catching errors. It is creating a clear chain of custody and a shared source of truth that allows questions to be resolved quickly and confidently.
Impact Beyond Operations Leaders
What's particularly interesting is that this value extends far beyond warehouse operations. Most people immediately recognize why operations leaders care about accountability and visibility, but we're increasingly seeing sales leaders take an interest as well. The reason is that these capabilities directly influence the retailer experience. Retailers do not necessarily care about the technology being used inside a distribution center. What they care about is how easy a distributor is to do business with. Every time a store employee has to leave the sales floor, stop helping customers, and spend fifteen minutes checking in a pallet, it creates friction. It takes time away from serving shoppers and adds another task to an already busy day. When distributors have confidence in what was delivered and can support that confidence with objective evidence, the receiving process becomes faster, simpler, and more efficient. Questions can be resolved quickly, check-ins become less disruptive, and retailers spend less time managing deliveries and more time focusing on their customers.
Shift from Operational Improvement to Competitive Differentiation
In man markets, distributors are selling similar products, competing on comparable pricing, and offering similar service commitments. The experience they create for retailers becomes one of the few meaningful ways to stand apart. A distributor that can support streamlined or scan-less receiving programs and provide confidence in every delivery is delivering something more than product. They are delivering time back to the retailer. They are eliminating friction from an everyday process and creating a level of convenience that competitors may struggle to match. That is why I believe sales organizations should view visibility and verification technologies as more than warehouse tools. They are tools that help strengthen customer relationships and create a more compelling value proposition in the marketplace.
Ultimately, the greatest value is found not just in adding another percentage point to accuracy, but also the confidence that comes from knowing what happened, the ability to provide evidence that can be reviewed by both parties, and the trust that develops when questions can be answered quickly and objectively. The distributors that will continue to separate themselves in the future are not simply the ones delivering the right products. They are the ones creating the easiest, most transparent, and most reliable experience for their retail partners. In the end, becoming a preferred delivery partner is about more than operational excellence. It is about making life easier for the customer.
Author
Vance Weintraub
Solutions Sales Specialist, former Product Owner