Fulfillment: What Does It Mean?

What is Fulfillment?

Fulfillment refers to the process of preparing and delivering a customer’s order. While catalog companies and larger operations typically are equipped to handle customer order fulfillment themselves, ecommerce companies and smaller businesses often hand over that aspect of the business to companies that specialize in fulfillment.

The Fulfillment Process

While shipping may sound easy, there’s much more to it than putting it in a box and shipping it. 3PL fulfillment companies can take care of;

• Warehousing, or Storing the actual product or accessories
• Producing or assembling the product,
• Packing up the order in a box or envelope
• Labeling the order for shipment
• Shipping the order with a major carrier, such as UPS, FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service
• Notifying the customer when items are shipped
• Processing payments

Does it Make Sense to Outsource Fulfillment?

For many small businesses, the decision to outsource fulfillment comes down to one thing, “time.”

Now, it’s not just time to prep and fulfill orders to get them out. Rather, it’s the concern of being able to get orders out to customers in a timely and accurate manner. This process is vital to the success of your business.

If your business suddenly started receiving a lot of orders, do you have the resources available to handle the growth? That’s scary when you think about it. If you get a ton of orders and you can’t ship some or shipments are going to be late, it can have a negative impact on your company. We’ve seen it happen, especially in the day and age of social media. Imagine having hundreds of customers complaining about your business within a matter of minutes, you may not be able to recover.

Now what?

The solution is ensuring that NEVER happens.

The other big issue is the amount of space your business has. Do you have the storage space to manage your inventory? If you don’t, you could be in trouble.

When you start running into problems, the fulfillment process itself can suffer. The next thing you know, you’re making mistakes trying to rush orders out. One after another, your business begins to crumble from the pressure. It’s not a good place to be in.

Fulfillment Services

While fulfillment services do handle order fulfillment and order management, they do a lot more, perhaps more than you realize.