Page 12 - EngineerIT AugustSeptember Issue 2026

LOGISTICS

Stress-test for Black Friday now

find myself having the same The upcoming Women's Day long Business owners have roughly ten
conversations with business owners in weekend provides an excellent weeks before an October system
t
I e November - always too late to make opportunity to dry run the three freeze locks things down. Here are
a
l
a difference. They typically have three pressures that define Black four things you can do to stress test
strong trading days as customers work Friday: an order spike, a pause for Black Friday before it’s too late
through their wishlists. Then a public holiday in collections, and a backlog to make code changes.
comes, and nothing moves, followed by clearing while new orders land.
a new week that opens with forty parcels Get it wrong in August, and 1. The gap between purchase
sitting on a late collection and customers on you could lose a few customers; and waybill
WhatsApp politely asking where their orders in November, you stand to lose Your first possible bottleneck sits
are. You know that courtesy has a shelf life. the season. just past checkout in the time
between an order landing and
Most merchants treat that new week as This matters more each year as you being able to create a waybill.
something to survive, but working with larger retailers keep shrinking the Ideally, that gap is seconds. If it
them day-to-day has shown us that it is gap between order and doorstep, takes hours, or you are typing an
far more useful to use these long weekends and shoppers expect everyone to address into a courier portal, you
as a dry run for the biggest shopping match it. Services like Checkers have found your first problem,
weekend of the year - Black Friday/ Sixty60 have passed 100 million and higher order volumes will only
Cyber Monday. orders across close to 700 stores. worsen it.
The delivery speed shoppers
expect from their grocery run has Get ahead of this by tracking what
become the benchmark every stalls: failed connections, duplicate
other vendor is measured against. shipments, orders stuck on pending,
More people are placing more anything needing a manual fix. On
orders, and growing less patient a well-integrated platform, that
with a poor delivery service. count sits near zero, and the waybill
follows the sale automatically,
freeing your team to focus on the
By Sahil Affriya, Founder & CEO, Shiprazor customer, not the admin.

12 | EngineerIT August/September 2026