Third-party shipping fulfillment services have changed the face of retail and exploded in popularity. Choosing the right logistics and order fulfillment partner for your needs makes it easy to deliver your products in a timely manner, without damage to packaging or contents. That’s critical to making your brand memorable and earning your customers’ trust.
It’s also a great way to reduce overhead and scale operations. By partnering with a packaging and fulfillment company, you’ll have more time to devote to growing your business.
Here, we’ll look at what you need to know when choosing an order fulfillment company.
Shipping Speeds
Today’s customers have high expectations for short delivery times. But on-time delivery is actually the end result of a cumulative process starting long before a package arrives in a customer’s mailbox or on their porch. Critical components of a timely delivery process include:
- Automated communication with your e-commerce platform for new orders
- Excellent physical organization and order picking procedures
- Software tools for tracking inventory and logistics
- Multiple warehouses located for efficient shipping to your sales range
- A sufficient distribution network to accommodate your growth
Look for a partner who can provide comprehensive services for order picking, packaging, and shipping – unifying all of these services under a single third-party vendor is the key to streamlined and reliable order fulfillment.
Transparency and Visibility
Customers value transparency and visibility into the details of their orders. Fulfillment companies help you provide these with options like easy, real-time tracking for shipments, quick email or text updates about delays or backorders, and reliable communication systems for order support. All of these help you gain buyers’ trust and turn them into loyal repeat customers.
Transparency is also vital for building trust and a solid working relationship with your fulfillment partner. You should receive regular data reports so you have end-to-end visibility into the fulfillment process and can make data-driven decisions.
This is another advantage to keeping all of your fulfillment operations under a single provider. All the data is consistent and at hand from a single source. This makes it easy to ensure quality assurance procedures are followed and to address issues at their root.
Technology
Technology has been transforming the retail world for decades, from cash registers to call centers and beyond. In today’s e-commerce landscape, customers’ interactions with your brand may be fully online. That means you need a seamless and reliable computerized system for order management and fulfillment.
Look for a vendor whose order management tools tie in with your e-commerce platform. This allows them to receive order data directly so your time is not spent shepherding each new order.
Your order fulfillment company should also offer a robust suite of tools for visibility into inventory, order management, and logistics. Look for these features:
- Traceability through automated pick lists, lot control, stock rotation, and parcel scanning
- Automated customer updates and support regarding order and delivery status
- Compliance protocols that meet industry regulations, when applicable
- Dedicated technology for custom packaging and promotional materials
- Strategic redundancies in fulfillment software systems for cross-checking data
Packaging and Fulfillment Experts
Daily 3PL is your one-stop source for integrated packaging and fulfillment needs. With expertise in supply chain and inventory management, logistics, and product forecasting, we can support large and small e-commerce ventures.
Contact us to learn more about our services, fulfillment processes, and pricing.