The success of E-Commerce companies largely depends on their ability to deliver goods on time which signals the completion of the order. Since user satisfaction makes all the difference between success and failure in the E-Commerce business, no company could dare to fail in fulfilling their delivery commitment to which the buyers attach a lot of importance.
Delayed delivery could turn away customers, while timely deliveries make customers so happy that they keep coming back again and again, which helps to build a community of loyal customers. And this why you must know more about Sherpack, a company that excels in providing agile solutions for timely delivery of online orders, which in trade parlance is known as E-Commerce order fulfillment.
What is E-Commerce order fulfillment?
The E-commerce business has three distinctive phases – the first phase is selling the products, the second phase is delivering the products, and the third phase is customer service. Only when all the phases work in unison helps to achieve the desired customer satisfaction that is so much important for the survival of the E-Commerce business.
E-Commerce fulfillment is the business process that consists of physically picking the ordered items from the shelves, packing them in ship-worthy boxes to ensure safe delivery, and finally arranging for logistics to deliver it to the doorstep of customers within the stipulated time.
Steps in E-Commerce fulfillment
E-Commerce fulfillment is a multi-step process that includes inventory management, warehousing, and storage, receiving, pick and pack, shipping, and handling returns.
- Inventory management ensures that the pipeline of products is maintained well so that it is possible to cater to any order at any point in time. It requires coordination with the supply chain arm of the company, including receiving raw materials so that there is a steady flow of products by avoiding stock-outs.
- Warehousing is part of the supply chain and ensures proper storage of products.
- Pick and pack is the stage of physically picking up the order from the racks and packing it for delivery.
- Shipping is the final stage of the fulfillment process that involves transportation of the packed goods to ensure their timely delivery to customers.
- Going ahead, the fulfillment process also includes collecting return items from customers and sending them back to the warehouse.
Fulfillment strategies
E-Commerce companies have three options when developing fulfillment strategies. First, they may have a complete in-house infrastructure to handle all activities of fulfillment. The second option is to rely on dropshipping, and the third option is to use 3PL or third-party logistics.
The choice of the fulfillment strategy depends on the company’s business operation and infrastructure that influences the business strategies. Since fulfillment is an elaborate exercise in logistics that involves considerable labor, most E-commerce companies prefer to outsource the services and entrust the job of fulfilling to some third party.
Outsourcing gives ready access to trained resources that helps to free in-house resources. As a result, you can put them to some better and productive use for business betterment.
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