Order Fulfilment covers the entire period from when a sale is made to the delivery of those goods to your customer. All in all the process includes processing orders, picking, packing, and shipping to the customer by the expected delivery date.
There are several stages to the order fulfilment process, which starts with the receiving of stock or inventory. These process are as follows:
As with any fulfilment process, goods can be stored in house and processed within your own premises by your own staff, or this can be outsourced and inventory received by a fulfilment centre at their warehouse to be stored ready to be shipped accordingly when orders come in.
Wherever it is received goods will be monitored, labelled, sorted, stored and managed through an inventory system.
Again, if this process is outsourced then your third party service provider will carry out all aspects of order processing otherwise it is all completed ‘in – house’, comprising of:
A third party carrier will now be responsible for getting the order to the customer/final destination, whether this is in-house or outsourced, the correct carrier will be instructed to collect and deliver said items within a certain time frame.
As part of the services provided by an outsourced fulfilment provider, processes such as the return of goods as well as paperwork such as customs clearance will most likely be carried out by them. If you are handling returns yourself then it is worth considering that many customers are now deterred by return fees and long processing times.
Order fulfilment is a great way to cut costs and be more time efficient whilst also improving your customer service and satisfaction. If all goes well it can help towards considerably increasing the profitability of your business. For some smaller businesses it could make sense to maintain their fulfilment processing in house, whereas for others the key to growth could be outsourcing the entire process to focus on other areas of the business.
Here at Delamode we offer eCommerce fulfilment solutions, which are modelled to be scalable and flexible, providing the perfect platform to help businesses grow internationally with our domestic and global e-commerce delivery, returns and e-commerce integration solutions.
If you would like to find out more you can get in touch with one of our expert team here: https://www.delamode-group.com/en/contact-us/