Tag: e-Commerce Fulfillment

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.

Transparent, efficient order fulfillment is one of the keys to success for an e-commerce business. Understanding each step of order fulfillment will help you choose the right 3PL for your business and customers.

Better E-Commerce Fulfillment Starts With Systems Integration

At Fulco Fulfillment, Inc. (FFI) orders are received from e-commerce businesses and sellers through a variety of methods. Most commonly, FFI receives its orders through an application programming interface or API. With an API, any online shopping cart can be connected directly to our fulfillment facility in Dover, NJ. The orders can then be picked, packed and shipped at a moment’s notice.

After we receive an order from a client’s e-commerce system, we automatically respond with pertinent information such as tracking data and the level of remaining inventory. This automation is one of the main drivers of our successful fulfillment process.

FFI Offers Many Order Management Solutions

Although most of our clients typically use an API solution, FFI can receive orders in a variety of ways.

• Batch Download
• CSV Order File
• Manual Order Entry

Manual order entry can be used for auto-ship or continuity programs like subscriptions. For the CSV method, it is important to send an updated list of subscribers each month including their corresponding orders. This method is useful for pharmaceuticals and magazines. Direct integration with a client’s online inventory is the most efficient way to work with us, but we are happy to work with any method a client prefers: email, fax or mail order.

Good Warehouse Management Streamlines Fulfillment

After the orders are received, they are printed and organized according to the method of shipping, i.e., two-day, expedited, etc. This allows us to correctly prioritize shipping times. Orders are then categorized by product type and sent to one of our warehouse sorting areas to be unpacked and packed in the preferred method of the client.

Orders are checked for any specific pick and pack instructions such as plastic wrapping or a particularly specified box size.

Throughout the pick, pack and ship process, frequent quality control checks are performed to be sure that each order is accurate. Typically each product is put into a small box or container and given the appropriate protection to avoid breakage during delivery. Smaller boxes with appropriate protection lower the dimensional weight of each package and will help save the client some money.

Efficient Shipping and Inventory Management

Labels for the orders, including shipping instructions, are organized by shipping location. When the orders have been labeled, they are put onto a pallet to prepare for their final journey.

Once the orders are shipped, clients have live access to tracking activity through our Order Management System portal.  FFI can even have tracking numbers sent to the client’s e-commerce system automatically.

Clients can customize their under-stock notification level. An email is sent to the client notifying them that it is time to re-stock, and another email is generated when inventory reaches zero. Since inventory is updated the moment items are shipped, the end customer will know immediately if their order is not available.

Flexible, Effective Fulfillment Helps Businesses Succeed

FFI has taken control of fulfillment and streamlined this potentially complicated process through software integration, efficient inventory and warehousing capabilities, and superior customer service. If you are looking to optimize your fulfillment process, we would love to work with you. We have solutions for all types of businesses! Give us a call at 973-361-1700 or fill out our contact form.

Fulco Fulfillment Inc’s order management system is the back end of your shopping cart for a pre-built web site to integrate any ecommerce fulfillment program. Ecommerce fulfillment is great for promotional product campaigns or established web presence start-up shopping cart stores. Fulco Fulfillment Inc. can warehouse and manage inventory for the ecommerce fulfillment customer.

Fulco Fulfillment’s order fulfillment can make ecommerce fulfillment a simple and easy process for any business. Our warehouse fulfillment services work in tandem with the ecommerce fulfillment process which often times can involve a variety of vendors and different schedules that need to be lined up. With Fulco Fulfillment Inc’s ecommerce fulfillment process, these seemingly difficult parts of the fulfillment process can be made easy and simple for your business.

What is ecommerce fulfillment?

Believe or not, your business no matter how small it may be has always been taking part in the ecommerce fulfillment process. With your growing business, you have looked to outsource the fulfillment to a third-part logistics (3PL) service such as Fulco Fulfillment Inc.

Fulco Fulfillment Inc. wants to bring that process to a much larger scale and make warehousing, inventory management and fulfillment and order fulfillment easier for you as well.

Ecommerce fulfillment can be divided into 4 easy steps. Step one is ecommerce data management and fulfillment center integration. Step two is receiving materials and inventory management. Following that is step three, order fulfillment. Pick, Pack Ship, Repeat. The final and fourth step is return processing. Through Fulco Fulfillment Inc. these four steps will appear fluid and easy for your growing business.

PICK, PACK, SHIP, REPEAT

Ecommerce data management and fulfillment center integration.

At first glance every fulfillment warehouse may appear to be simply storing a bunch of boxes on giant shelves, but Fulco Fulfillment Inc. provides so much more than that. An ecommerce fulfillment center such as Fulco Fulfillment Inc. is in fact a technological warehouse ready to communicate with our hardworking employees at anytime about the next task on hand, to get your product from point A to point B promptly and efficiently. Your ecommerce store will be perfectly integrated into our fulfillment center and our employees will be ready to send them out on a moment’s notice.

Our IT department will be ready to handle any ecommerce fulfillment issues that may arise throughout the process. Fulco Fulfillment Inc. strives for customer satisfaction and will work to fill your ecommerce fulfillment needs however it may be possible for us to do so.

Receiving and Inventory Management

Pallets upon pallets of your products will be kept in our fulfillment warehouse and added to our database, each of the products are kept track of so nothing is out of order and so we’re ready to fill out any orders that are being placed.

Fulco Fulfillment’s pick and pack services make sure to bring the receiving process straight to our inventory. After all, without the product being in inventory there is no way any of the products can be properly shipped. Fulco Fulfillment will have that completely covered quickly and efficiently.

Using ecommerce fulfillment services, Fulco Fulfillment will be able to view our inventory and management system to check on the products at hand with care. Fulco Fulfillment takes pride in making sure no items are lost or broken in the process and any missing or broken products will be reported back to you. We wish to provide the most minimal shrinkage possible and want to provide satisfaction for our customers.

Pick, Pack and Ship Order Fulfillment

All items going through Fulco Fulfillment Inc. are picked and packed carefully and efficiently to make sure that the right items are going through to the buyers. These items will then be shipped in a timely manner right to their destination using various shipping services.

Fulco Fulfillment Inc. is the third party logistics (3PL) provider that will bring your products out of the tiny and cramped spaces, into something more spacious that will make the fulfillment process seem much simpler than before.

Fulco Fulfillment Inc. will ship throughout the tri-state area quickly and beyond so that the orders being made are brought to their destination in a timely manner. Picking and Packing inventory is done with great care into each and everyone of FFIs products are shipped with care.

Key Terms: Fulfillment Glossary

• 3PL: See third-party logistics.
• E-Fulfillment: Warehousing and processing of eCommerce orders.
• E-Logistics: The data management part of third-party logistics operations.
• ECommerce Fulfillment: Fulfillment of online orders, also referred to as e-fulfillment.
• Inventory: The products you have in stock at any given time.
• Inventory Accuracy: The match (or mismatch) between the inventory that the computer says the warehouse has and what’s actually on the shelves.
• Inventory Management: Supervision of inventory and stock items, Data is used to keep track of goods as they move through the process.
• Order Fulfillment: This refers to everything needed to send out an order, from receiving the order through picking and packing to shipping.
• Pallet: A platform of wood slats onto which products are stacked. Pallets are designed so that forklift prongs can be inserted in the middle to lift and move goods. The amount of merchandise that can be placed on one pallet is also sometimes referred to as a pallet.
• Pick and Pack: Picking the items to be shipped together in one order. Rather than shipping each item individually, orders are picked and packed into a single box to save shipping costs and get inventory to buyers most efficiently.
• Shrinkage: The loss of inventory stored in a fulfillment warehouse due to breakage, theft, being misplaced, and other types of damage.
• Third-Party Logistics: Outsourcing your warehousing, packing, and shipping to a third-party vendor who specializes in logistics.