What is a fulfillment company?
Fulfillment company usually refer to the organization that provides companies with services such as order receipts, packaging, and transportation. The functions and scope of order fulfillment are now more complex and efficient than ever before.
A technologically advanced fulfillment center can manage and simplify the fulfillment process through order fulfillment software or systems.
Outsourcing the management of the order fulfillment process to a professional fulfillment company allows companies to focus more on order growth instead of internal warehouses, inventory management, transportation, and returns.
What kind of factors should you consider when you choose a fulfillment company?
1. Delivery speed
Now Amazon Prime has set a new two-day delivery rule, which means that consumers expect faster shipping speeds than ever before.
So, if your company’s current order volume is considerable but the order delivery speed is far behind, then your customer churn rate will gradually increase. When your company can no longer optimize the order fulfillment process, you can try to cooperate with an order fulfillment company.
Excellent and professional fulfillment companies have effective management systems and order fulfillment software, enabling them to deliver quickly.
2. The location of the distribution warehouse
The most important point of order processing outsourcing is to examine the location of the distribution warehouse of the partner company.
To meet customers’ expectations of delivering products in a short time and improve their user experience, it makes sense to choose an order fulfillment center close to the customer. For your international business, you need to confirm whether the other party provides global delivery services before cooperating with them.
To reduce the additional burden on your business and devote more time to increasing order volume, you need to study the order fulfillment system and software used by the fulfillment companies you cooperate with. Different fulfillment companies vary order fulfillment software, and you need to ensure that their software is easy to implement and can seamlessly integrate with the business platform applications you are using.
3. Transparency
The transparency of order fulfillment is also an essential part of your corporate image. Survey data shows that 88% of consumers want to track their products in real-time. 69% of consumers said that if the merchant fails to deliver the product within the promised delivery date, they will not shop again in the future.
Therefore, when you choose an order fulfillment partner, you need to know whether it can meet the delivery time limit you require.
4.Return management
Due to the fast and convenient free return and exchange policy, about one-third of online orders are canceled orders. Some returns are uncontrollable (the customer doesn’t like the product at all). A reputable fulfillment company will manage the product well and minimize returns.
5.Cost
Your cooperation with a third-party logistics provider involves some initial costs, but in the long run, you will save labor, logistics costs, storage costs, etc. Besides, you also need to make sure that the fulfillment center you cooperate with can provide you with the best deal.
Since you have to pay for delivery services (your products are always moving after all), the delivery center should not charge you for long-term storage.
Due to the shipping volume of the shipping center, the distribution center can also get a larger discount from the operator than any single e-commerce retailer, so you want to make sure they can pass on some of the savings to you. These reduced costs often allow e-commerce retailers to compete with industry giants by offering free or reduced-price transportation.