Simplifying E-Commerce: 6 Essential Aspects of Fulfillment

When it comes to running an e-commerce store, fulfillment presents one of the biggest challenges. From the time an order is placed up until the time it’s delivered, many tedious steps are required to ensure an order is processed correctly and efficiently.

Whether you’re experienced in e-commerce or just starting out, the various aspects involved in fulfillment are likely familiar to you. However, what might come as a shock is that every online seller follows the same fulfillment steps. So, regardless of what platforms you’re selling on, what products you’re selling, or how many orders you’re processing, you’ll follow the same fulfillment steps as the next e-commerce seller. Therefore, the key to optimizing your fulfillment is understanding the aspects of fulfillment and the best ways to manage them for your business’s needs.

We’ve worked with many online businesses and helped simplify their fulfillment processes. In doing this, we’ve been able to identify six essential aspects of e-commerce fulfillment:

The 6 Essential Aspects of Fulfillment

Storefront Management

Storefront management is critical, especially if you’re selling your items through multiple storefronts and marketplaces. Preferably, you’ll want to find a way to manage all of your selling platforms under one dashboard.

Order Management

Order management ensures that, once a customer places an order, you receive that information in an efficient and organized way. This is especially important if you sell through multiple storefronts and marketplaces. If order management becomes disorganized, you run the risk of sending out incorrect orders or failing to send orders altogether.

Inventory Management

Having a real-time view of your inventory is essential in e-commerce, especially if you’re selling through multiple platforms. Additionally, if you’re selling on multiple storefronts and marketplaces, you’ll want to make sure that your inventory is consistent with them all. If you have a sale on one store or a change in product listings, that product change should be reflected on your other platforms.

Pick/Pack/Labeling

Picking, packing, and labeling are three intertwined steps that come into play as you assemble your customer’s order.

Picking is the process of selecting the products needed for a specific customer’s order. Once you’ve received a customer’s order and you’re ready to fulfill it, you’ll head to your inventory to pick the products for that order.

Your Pack list is a list of all of the orders you have processed. This list will include what items are needed for each order, where each order is being shipped, and what type of packaging you should use for each order.

Once an order is packaged, Labeling is the process of attaching a shipping label to the package. This label contains the order’s carrier ID, shipping service, customer information, and any special note.

Packaging

Packaging your orders correctly is important in ensuring their safe delivery to the customer. Additionally, an order’s packaging is one of the biggest determinants of shipping costs. Shipping carriers all have very similar rates, so in actuality, the packaging you use will determine many of the costs associated with shipping.

Shipping Management

As stated above, shipping management is important because this is where many expenses come in. Keeping your shipping choices up-to-date and cost-effective is going to be critical to the success and cost savings of your company.

How Should I Manage My Fulfillment?

While your business is just starting out, performing all of these fulfillment steps on your own is a viable option. However, once you’re fulfilling more orders, you might want to begin exploring other fulfillment avenues.

To learn more about your options for fulfillment, check out our next blog post, Simplifying E-Commerce: 3 Options to Manage Your Operations.

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