Business leaders understand that flawless service is key to retaining customers and winning new ones. While “service” covers many areas, the most critical component is your ability to deliver on-time and in-full—every time. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, your customer expects their order exactly when promised. If you can’t meet that expectation, you lose ground—fast. In today’s market, there's no room for delays or excuses. The Amazon effect has raised the bar, and customers expect every business to meet it.
While there’s multiple factors that make consistent on-time fulfillment a challenge, the largest culprit is the fact that order volumes fluctuate constantly and unpredictably for most manufacturers and distributors. When relying on the traditional staff to averages approach with only a fixed workforce, trying to address this without inflating costs becomes an eternal struggle.
In this article, we’ll break down why staffing to averages leads to average results—and how Veryable’s on-demand labor model gives you the flexibility to scale with demand, control costs, and deliver the kind of service that sets you apart.
The traditional approach to staffing in operations is to build your workforce around historical averages—planning for a “typical” day that rarely exists. When demand spikes, you lean on overtime, burnout your core team, and risk late orders. When demand dips, you're left carrying excess labor costs and idle time.
Here’s why this is ineffective:
As previously mentioned, your order volumes aren’t the same each day and often shift unpredictably. The graph below shows average vs. actual demand for one of our distribution partners. While not every business’s demand will fluctuate exactly like this, our experience working with thousands of businesses tells us that this is a common pattern.
As you can see, demand rarely sits at the average. If you're staffing to that average, you're almost always over or understaffed.
When you're overstaffed, you're paying people to stand around—killing productivity and eating into margins. But layoffs don’t solve the problem, because just weeks later, you’ll likely need that same capacity again. With how costly and time-consuming it is to hire and onboard new full-time employees, any short-term savings from scaling down quickly disappear when you have to ramp back up.
When you're understaffed, you're forced to lean on overtime just to keep up. Paying time-and-a-half isn’t sustainable, and stretching your team thin leads to mistakes, missed deadlines, and eventually—burnout. High overtime drives high turnover, and backfilling those roles under pressure only adds more cost and chaos.
The bottom line: staffing to averages makes it nearly impossible to consistently hit on-time delivery goals and stay within cost targets.
Thankfully, there's a better way.
Our on-demand marketplace for manufacturing and warehousing labor connects businesses with thousands of skilled and vetted workers at the click of a button, enabling businesses to create a flexible extension of their full-time workforce called a labor pool.
By building a labor pool, businesses gain the ability to scale labor up and down in tandem with demand.
Instead of staffing to a moving target, you anchor your full-time headcount at your minimum average volume (represented by the purple dashed line on the left side of the graphic).
When demand rises above that threshold (closer to the pink dashed line), you flex up by deploying operators from your labor pool. When it drops, you simply dial back on usage—no excess headcount, no sunk costs.
The result? You’re always right-sized for demand. No more overstaffing during slow periods or scrambling to keep up during spikes. Just a lean, responsive operation that delivers on-time, every time—within cost targets.
Additionally, because Veryable’s platform allows you to post work opportunities one day or one shift at a time, you can bring in extra help only when you need it—whether it’s to cover a no-show, backfill for turnover, or respond to a last-minute order. You’re only paying for the labor you actually use, and nothing more.
Not to mention that with thousands of ready to work operators available in every market we serve, there’s virtually no limit to how fast or how much you can scale.
When your operations team can match labor to demand in real time, every order goes out on time—no matter what volume you're facing. Turnover, call-outs, and last-minute spikes no longer derail your day; your team can bring in extra help at the click of a button.
In fact, many Veryable users bring in additional operators same-day. As Jared Murphy, Innovation Engineer at RTIC Outdoors, puts it:
“The nice thing with Veryable is that we can really adapt quickly. So from one day to the next, we can adjust—but also, we’ve had situations where the same day, we come in on a Monday with 3,000 more orders than expected. By 10 a.m., we’ve got another group of people coming in.”
When you deliver with speed and consistency, your sales team can confidently retain customers and pursue new opportunities. No more saying no to large or urgent orders because of labor constraints.
You’ll turn marketing promises into operational reality—and that unlocks serious growth.
As JaNiece Cranmer, President of Scentsational Soaps & Candles, shared:
“We onboarded a new customer that put in 1.2 million units in just six months. We would not have been able to take on that customer without our Veryable labor pool.”
Staffing to actual demand instead of averages means you eliminate the waste of being constantly over- or understaffed. That alone will reduce one of your largest operating expenses: labor.
You’ll also cut detention fees, reduce reliance on overtime, and avoid costly customer churn. That means more cash to reinvest where it matters—R&D, marketing, or facility updgrades.
As Wilson Duke, Warehouse Director at Made-In Cookware, explains:
“It’s all about keeping our labor cost per unit as low as possible by being able to throttle up and throttle down. That frees up money for R&D, marketing—whatever’s needed to grow our brand and sell more product.”
And perhaps most importantly, when you deliver consistently, you protect the long-term value of your customer relationships. Losing a hard-won account due to missed commitments doesn’t just hurt—it wastes months of effort and leaves money on the table. With Veryable, you avoid that entirely and build a reputation for reliability that sets you apart.
The Folde, an Austin, TX based laundry delivery service had been operating for 5 years and wanted to keep growing, but was having to turn down orders due to labor constraints. In fact, they had to turn off successful marketing campaigns because they couldn’t fulfill any additional orders.
Customer support issues piled up as the strain showed, and the leadership team was regularly folding clothes until 3 a.m. just to keep up. Burnout and retention problems began affecting both employees and managers, threatening the business’s future growth.
By building an on-demand labor pool skilled in laundry folding, housekeeping, and general labor tasks, The Folde gained the flexibility to match workforce capacity to daily demand. This not only ensured every order shipped on time, but also enabled them to confidently take on more business—without sacrificing their team’s well-being or risking operational breakdowns.
After just 6 months of using Veryable, The Folde achieved the following results:
To see the full case study, click here.
At the end of the day, your ability to grow sales and maintain a competitive edge hinges on one critical factor: your operations team’s capacity to get orders out on time and within cost targets—every single time.
By leveraging Veryable’s on-demand labor model, you’re equipping your team with the flexibility and tools needed to precisely match labor to demand. This not only drives maximum return for your business but also delivers unmatched value to your customers, strengthening loyalty and reputation.
With virtually unlimited, flexible capacity available at the click of a button, you can confidently pursue growth opportunities without the constant worry of labor shortages or overstaffing. Your workforce becomes a strategic advantage—scalable, responsive, and cost-effective—allowing you to focus on what matters most: growing your business and delighting your customers.
The first step in getting started is to create your free business profile - this only takes a few minutes. Our team of experts will reach out shortly after to answer any questions you have and ensure your operations team is set up for success.
If you need any help, please contact us.
To learn more about the Veryable solution, click here.
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