"If need be, we simply add more people from our well-trained part-time pool during seasonal peaks or move staff over from other operations," responds the private sector fulfillment sales representative. Whether or not this promise can become a reality is debatable.
In an in-plant, the manager quite often has more of an inkling of when seasonal peaks and valleys of demand are likely to occur than an outside vendor. In-plant managers have more contact with marketing coordinators and marketing secretaries while processing other work requests than most any outside vendor. While few reliable systems of predicting future fulfillment demand exist in practice, frequent communications with the client's staff have proven to be the most trustworthy predictors.
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- C. Clint Bolte Associates