I contacted my vendors again who a month before said they everything in stock and would have it in stock and placed the orders. The COVID supply chain was brutal. Vendor’s supplies did not come in, so I had to contact other vendors. Vendor’s delivery times grew, but I had padded my project plan with extra lead having anticipated this and taking the additional time into account.

I virtually made a plan with my staff. We timed how long it would take for bags to be filled and bowed. We measured how much product was needed to be ordered by unit or weight, depending on the item. I did the math and then redid the math, and then asked my manager to check my numbers. The plan was to bring in extra staff and then divide the tasks. Seasonal employees would fill bags and regular staff would tie the bags, a skilled position.
I then made a plan for how to manage not only this project’s order but how to take into account other seasonal order and there were a lot as well as retail customer curbside pickups and local deliveries.

Implementing the project plan remotely with virtual project management

The project plan was in place. I finalized all the orders and tracked them to make sure orders were being shipped as promised. My staff started working on their tasks. As Robert Burns wrote, “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley which means something often goes awry. No matter how carefully a person or a team construct a project plan, things can still go wrong. Of course, my project was no different. One of the regular staff got sick. Seasonal employees did not always show up for their shifts. But once again, I anticipated this and had built a little extra time into these tasks as well.

Then there was spillage of product and customer additions to the order. I expected that both of these things would occur, and planned for it. Seasonal employees’ spilled more than regular staff, and the client added onto her order both during and after the agreed upon time frame. I was covered, I had ordered an extra percent of everything knowing that I would not be able to get anything last minute.

Since I had bought the business, I used a single shipping company for ground and air packages. I had the depot phone number, as well as many of the driver’s cell phone numbers. If we were not ready when our scheduled pickup came which happened during the holidays I would simply contact the night driver and he would come by. Amazing what sponsoring his daughter softball team did to improve our productivity. This order was different, the client wanted us to use their shipper because of the crazy cheap rates they had negotiated.

I learned the new software and virtually so I could create the  thousands of shipping labels needed. This required numerous conversations with the shippers’ customer service team. First, to learn how to batch import and print labels and how early the labels could be printed prior to shipping, and how much lead time the company needed to schedule such a large pickup.

I was virtually tracking our progress using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. We were ready for the first shipment, which was supposed to ship on November first. Two days before the shipment, I entered the information into the shippers online system just like the customer service representative instructed me to do. Everything went off without a glitch. First 50 packages shipped.

I contacted the client because customer service was part of the plan and let them know the first batch was sent. My staff continued to pack, and I continued to track. The project was progressing nicely.

The next month was busy, I was virtually managing multiple client projects and my staff was technically speaking kicking butt. I made sure to send in meals of encouragement, a great practice for keeping your staff motivated, and made sure that we had plenty of coffee ordered for the break room.

Everything was on track for the December ship dates. I had worked it out with the client before that we would ship her December order out over 3 days. This was part of my plan to handle the multiple client orders that we had, as well as making sure we had enough ice packs frozen based on freezer space.