Consumers want the products they order online delivered to their doors quickly and with the least bit of hassle. Are your order fulfillment services tasked to meet customers’ expectations for speed and no- or low-cost shipping?
If you’re a seller, it is difficult to meet those demands if you don’t have the processes and infrastructure in place to fulfill those orders quickly. Furthermore, once your customers get to their shopping cart, the sale can still be in jeopardy if the checkout experience is clumsy and time consuming. Consider:
- Shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if shipping, taxes or other fees are too high.
- Speed of delivery is an important factor in getting shoppers to click “Submit.”
- A poor delivery and return experience will chase a customer away for good.
- Shoppers are an impatient breed and will be more likely to cancel their order if there are slow delivery speeds or unexpected delays.
Are Order Fulfillment Services Right for Your Company?
If you’re trying to fulfill orders in-house and you’re running into problems because either volume is too high (which is a good thing), or your fulfillment team is stretched too thin and finding the right employees is difficult, it might be time for you to consider outsourcing your fulfillment services.
Why is Outsourcing Order Fulfillment Services a Good Idea?
Order fulfillment services for ecommerce sales consists of physically labor intensive processes that need to be handled efficiently to assure that your profit margin is not eaten up by wasted hours or temporary staff increases.
Order fulfillment services include storing inventory, picking and packing the products, and then shipping online orders to customers. A small ecommerce company with manageable orders taken might be able to handle this in house. However, as demand grows, calling upon a third-party logistics provider (3PL) such as Fulco Fulfillment Inc. is a more cost-effective option which can free you to concentrate on the other parts of running your business that can lead to continued growth.
The ecommerce order fulfillment process applies to both business-to-business (B2B) orders (where large quantities of product are shipped to big box retailers) as well as business-to-consumer (B2C) orders that are shipped directly to a shopper’s home.
When it comes to B2C orders, the consumer may place an order on the website of the merchant or through an online marketplace. Once the customer finishes their purchase, the fulfillment process kicks in and getting the order ready for shipment becomes the priority.
What is Your Order Fulfillment Services Strategy?
Every ecommerce business needs an order fulfillment services strategy to handle present orders and prepare for future growth so that infrastructure is in place to meet demand as the business grows.
These are some of the key considerations you’ll want to address:
Consider your location to optimize fulfillment.
Just because your business mostly runs online doesn’t mean that your physical location can make a huge difference in streamlining your ecommerce processes.
Besides the size of your storage, the location where you fulfill your orders is an important aspect that contributes to delivery costs and speed, and ultimately, customer satisfaction.
Optimizing your fulfillment operation based on where your customers reside will help you reach all the people you need to reach in the most cost-efficient manner.
For example, shipping orders to customers in the U.S. from overseas can take large amounts of time unless the customers are willing to pay significantly more for faster delivery. Focusing the shipping zone or how far a package travels will more often than not reduce the cost of shipping and the amount of time it takes to ship a package.
A fulfillment center such as Fulco Fulfillment Inc. is close to New York City and points all along the East Coast. This makes for affordable shipping to customers in areas where populations are concentrated. Taking it farther afield, it’s also possible to optimize fulfillment by distributing the inventory to multiple locations that are in the closest proximity to your customers. The more fulfillment resources that are near common shipping destinations the more ground shipping can be leveraged. This is significantly cheaper than any expedited air and much faster than shipping from a further distance.
Order fulfillment technology that integrates platforms is critical.
Software that integrates with an ecommerce platform and online marketplace, such as the technology available at Fulco Fulfillment Inc., can help your business manage orders across any sales channels without the need to manually upload or duplicate data entries. The Fulco Fulfillment, Inc. IT team works directly with EDI and API service providers to ensure seamless delivery of products to large retailers. As soon as an order is placed online, the fulfillment staff will quickly be alerted on their devices to pick, pack, and ship any items needed to the customer.
Fulco Fulfillment Inc. will send back any tracking information to the platform or marketplace that will then be shared with the customer, as well as track inventory quantities across fulfillment locations so you always know where you stand.
Leveraging platform integrations is critical to connecting upstream activities such as purchasing and manufacturing with downstream activities like sales and product demand so your business can make a more accurate purchasing and production decision when the time comes.
Looking to Incorporate Order Fulfillment Services into Your Ecommerce Business?
Call Fulco Fulfillment at 973-361-1700 to schedule your free consultation. We look forward to working with you in the future in expanding your business.