Here’s a question for new e-commerce business owners, “do you have adequate knowledge and full understanding as to what follows after an order is placed?”
For those whose answer is a clear NO or unsure what to say, then you are in the right place. One way or another, you have to bring the product to your customers, either you chose to let a drop shipper fulfill your orders for you, you do them yourself or you find a logistics company that will be in-charge of your warehousing and fulfillment.
Packing and shipping your own orders is the more flexible and cheap choice that’s why it is preferred by businesses that are just starting out, and businesses that have unique ecommerce packaging needs. Also, it is often better for business to handle things in-house especially if they are struggling with cash flow. So, they can compensate their lack of money with their time.
Meanwhile, for growing businesses that are financially ready to outsource, exploring third-party warehousing and fulfillment is a considerable option. Here we’ll discuss further more about it.
What are fulfillment services?
E-commerce fulfillment service is about hiring a third-party warehouse to process orders for you. This means preparing and shipping them from its fulfillment center. It’s perfect for businesses that are not up doing their own shipping or just don’t have enough warehousing capabilities and are unable to ship orders themselves anymore.
There are many large third-party fulfillment providers out there. But if you’re looking to optimize your fulfillment strategy, it is preferable to work with a provider that gives you flexibility with a central view of your data and smart inventory allocation across multiple warehouses.
Benefits of hiring third-party logistics
Aside from saving you from doing the work yourself, here are some things that can be contributed by outsourced warehousing and fulfillment service providers to the growth of your business.
- Provides you experts and professionals
Aside from warehouse space, service providers also get experts who will be responsible for running the fulfillment center. Hiring your own staff is mandatory when fulfilling and shipping your own orders and it takes time to get a team in line. So, if you don’t have plenty of time and money to spare, you can just outsource the work to a logistics company and let them do the work of finding and hiring good people.
Each third-party logistics (3PL) has a whole team of experts and support staff who knows the right way to go. They are assigned with all of the labor needed for receiving, inventory management, and order processing and shipping. It makes progress much quicker compared to what you can achieve on your own.
- Removes long-term leases to your list of needs
Thanks to the flexible pricing of many logistic companies and it will be easier for you to adjust in case you are growing or going through some dormant periods. This means their services and easily be modified to adapt to your needs based on your financial capabilities. You also don’t need to commit to renting your own warehouse space.
- Give you more time to optimize
Managing and optimizing across the company should be your focus when doing business. That’s why it’s lot better if you just let someone else to take care of the logistics of order fulfillment while you see to it that more important aspects are being dealt with.
Take not that third-party warehousing and fulfillment isn’t for everyone, but if you find yourself in one of these situations, seeking help from the logistics company of your choice might be the best call.