What’s the most important aspect of your business when you’re involved with selling a product? You may answer that a large client base or an excellent marketing strategy is the most important, and this is true. However, there is no point in focusing on expanding your client base or being able to market your company without delivering what you say you can to your customer, and that’s where warehouse fulfillment comes in.
What is the Fulfillment Process?
To truly understand how you can utilise a process like this, you first need to know what it is. In a nutshell warehouse fulfillment starts with receiving an order from your client and processing it to the point of delivery. There are all sorts of things to consider before you get from A – B. How is the order received? How is it processed? What type of warehouse picking system do you have, and most importantly how quickly can all of this be done.
For Start-Ups of Small Businesses
If you’re involved with a start-up or your business is small, it’s pretty easy to manage how your warehouse fulfillment works in-house. It’s likely you don’t have many staff which means it’s very difficult for employees to “hide”. In short, if a mistake is made it’s usually very easy to find out who is responsible.
The process may go something like this: You have a team of telesales staff who are responsible for taking orders over the phone and filling out an order form. This is then passed on to the team in the warehouse who are responsible for picking the correct items, packing them and sending them to the customer – easy!
For Larger Companies
As your business grows, logistics become harder to manage, and this is when you might want to consider outsourcing your warehouse fulfillment needs. There are many companies on the market that will help you do this efficiently, and it will help keep your overheads down to a manageable level. In fact, you could save a great deal of money.
Say you have a warehouse? Well, you could do away with that because companies who offer this type of service will have the space available to house all of your products for you. All you need to do is pass on the orders you receive, and everything else is done for you. Of course, managing stock levels, ensuring the customer receives their order on time and in good condition are all things a good outsourcing firm like this will make sure happens for you. Think of the amount of money you could save by not having your own warehouse?
Consider This before Outsourcing
Make sure you choose the company you want to help you wisely. Their reputation should be second to none along with a high success rate for completed deliveries. Reports such as stock levels, number of orders delivered and whatever else you want to see should be readily available to you. The fact is if you want your business to continue growing outsourcing your warehouse fulfillment needs is definitely worth considering.
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