For any eCommerce store, fulfillment is one of the most critical processes. Customers don’t just expect their products to arrive quickly—they expect them to arrive as fast as Amazon delivers them. The two-day shipping model has moved from a unique offering to a must-have.
Order fulfillment can be time-consuming and full of hurdles if you’re not prepared and strategic.
The following are things you can do to manage your entire process, from processing orders rapidly to being able to create and manage shipping labels quickly.
Automate
Online businesses need to invest in automated solutions for eCommerce fulfillment. You need technology for a couple of big reasons.
First, automated technology is going to reduce human error. Second, automation will help you be more efficient.
With automation, you can speed up delivery times and make each step of the order management process go more smoothly, starting with the purchase order and going through the shipping process.
A fully automated order processing system will work with your online store or perhaps across multiple sales channels.
Automated solutions verify orders and enter them directly into your inventory or order processing system, so you’re not constantly required to re-enter information. Later on, you can use the platform’s data analytics to gain valuable insight like demand forecasting.
Automation of order processing tasks like verification and the creation of shipping labels speeds up every part of your process too.
Partner Integration
If you don’t manufacture your products, which is fairly likely, you’re probably outsourcing from a few different suppliers at least. Then you might store them in warehouses and ship or drop-ship to your customers when they place an order.
If this is your business model, you need seamless connections with all distributors, which can facilitate an order management system.
Consider an Inventory Manager
You might need an inventory manager, depending on the volume and size of your business. An inventory manager can head up everything in the fulfillment process, and there’s one single point person, allowing you to focus on other parts of growing your business.
Assess Your Warehouse Flow
You may not even realize how much wasted time in your fulfillment process stems from just walking around a warehouse. You need a clean, neat, and organized warehouse with a layout that will promote an efficient flow.
Take a look and see if you’re meeting those standards or if there are places for improvement.
Specific things to look for include hot pick zones made up of the most popular items you sell and ensuring slow-moving stock is stored out of the way. You should have dedicated packing stations, and everyone in your warehouse needs to know what their specific, individual responsibilities are in the process.
Once you look at the flow and layout of your warehouse, you should also audit your existing processes.
For example, are you doing things manually that could be automated only because you’ve always done things that way?
Are there things that could be done in bulk if not automated?
Customer Visibility
Customers are highly impatient in today’s digital, on-demand world. They always want to see where their order is in the process at any given time. When you provide tracking information, they can manage their own self-service and free up your team.
Good communication with customers is important to keep them happy. It will reduce your customer service workload when they use self-service to check on orders, but you’re more likely to develop relationships with loyal repeat customers.
Sending messages letting customers know you got their order, then when it ships, and when it arrives are little things that you can easily add to your fulfillment process that go a long way. Also, consider including a notification letting customers know what to do if their order is late.
How Reliable Is Your Shipper?
The shipping part is, of course, one of the most important aspects of your eCommerce business. A customer doesn’t keep doing business with you if their items arrive late or are damaged. Sometimes they might not arrive at all.
If you can’t get orders out on time, there’s a lot of competitors in eCommerce who will.
Make sure that it’s not time to reconsider your shipping partnership. You’ll have to look at analytics and how your current shipper is performing before making this decision.
If you decide to find a new shipping partner, make sure you take the time for due diligence.