When you care about these questions, it’s about time to improve your ecommerce order fulfillment process.
- Manual inventory management opens up a room for human error?
- Your order cannot be processed in time?
- Your order may not be despatched until 24 hours，even 48 hours?
- Is the delivery time too long?
- Wrong items have been sent out occasionally?
- Is it difficult to choose the appropriate shipment among many options?
- No update tracking information?
Due to above problems, negative customer
reviews will increase, hurting e-commerce store rankings and sales.
But solving these problems is not
difficult. Here are 4 simple but very effective ways for improving Ecommerce
order fulfillment process.
1. Improving Inventory Handling capacity
Order fulfillment process begins with
inventory, so the first thing is setting up inventory and keeping it accurate.
A. Inventory information must be updated in time.
In addition to orders, returns, damage and free samples can also be carried out according to the accuracy of your inventory level.
B. Forecast the demand of each sales channel to
ensure sufficient inventory or reduce unnecessary inventory.
2. The best tip to improve order fulfillment process is automation.
Without the help of the automated system
and fulfillment process, shipping product will cost you too much time and money
in the process. The direct impact is that ecommerce orders cannot be processed
in a timely manner.
If your order fulfillment partner provides
the API integration with online stores, the customers’ orders can be processed
quickly, including inventory management, pick & pack and tracking number.
Then, it is easy to deliver packages within 24 hours.
An automated order fulfillment process might look like this:
The advantages of automation are more than that:
- The inventory will be updated automatically.
- Watching closely on what’s happening with your order. And automatically prompts you for pending issues during the order fulfillment process.
- Provide accurate and rapid tracking services for you and customers.
3. Customized packaging not only shows your brand, but also reduces costs and damages.
Opening an eagerly awaited package and finding the broken items inside is irritating, to say the least.
The best order fulfillment services
provider can do everything for you, from the warehousing to consumer
satisfaction. Even if you have many special requirements, such as customized
packaging.
Upon receiving orders, they will pick and pack the items into the appropriately sized box with the right packaging materials or repacking your products in customized boxes according to your brand style. And they will reach their destination in a sound condition and at a reasonable cost.
So, to summarize, order fulfillment is more than simply completing the delivery and receipt of goods. It is more important to show perfection in details.
4. Choose appropriate logistics channels to shorten the delivery time.
Many ecommerce buyers want to receive their beloved things as soon as possible.
For the seller, positive customer satisfaction is the best thing, which will enhance the trust of the store and lead to a high re-purchase rate.
Most e-commerce sellers will not choose the expensive express delivery，even though they are fast.
Therefore, excellent e-commerce order fulfillment provider will customize dedicated lines targeting different countries to deliver packages at a low price and fast speed. Furthermore, it will also supports fast speed and low cost.
More over, in peak season, a successful order fulfillment can still be quickly completed.
5. The wrong shipment is unavoidable, but it can be controlled effectively
There is no doubt that the wrong shipment
is unavoidable for various reasons.
But the professional order fulfillment partner can monitor the whole journey of the goods’ movement, then the mistake is very easy to avoid. This is usually done with a bar code. The barcode is scanned once per process and the error rate will be greatly reduced.
6. Outsourcing to a 3PL fulfillment service, who are responsible for everything in order fulfillment.
If your business is stalled because of these issues, consider –outsourcing to fulfillment partners to optimize your order fulfillment process.
Shipping goods across the world is not that
easy. There are so many nuisances involved in the process, such as customs
clearance, DDP or delivered duties paid and export tax rebate.
Not only that, even in the same postal
company, once the weight and size of the item change, the postal cost will
increase rapidly.
Therefore, it takes a lot of manpower to study the changes in freight rates and the customs clearance process, but not necessarily good results. That’s why I recommend that you outsource logistics to 3PL fulfillment service, who manages multiple carriers, rates and transportation services for you. (postal, courier, dedicated lines, fba, etc.).
The best 3PL provides one-stop shipment & fulfillment solution for you. Providing requirements and product information (volume, weight, characteristics) and handing the goods to them is the only thing you need to do and the rest is fulfilled by 3PL, including warehousing, picking & packing, shipping.
Besides, the professional 3pl will
customize the best logistics solution for you at the best cost and delivery
time.
More than that, if 3PL has sophisticated technology that can be integrated directly with your e-commerce platform or marketplace, which will bring orders, shipments, inventory tracking, and more together in one place to streamline and automate the order fulfillment process.
If your supplier is in China and you are looking for such an excellent partner, you can contact SFC, who will provide you with the most suitable order fulfillment solution.
https://www.facebook.com/sendfromchina.SFC