What is ecommerce fulfillment?
Ecommerce fulfillment refers to the logistical process of delivering an order to a customer after they have ordered it online. Having efficient supply chain processes in place to ensure that customer orders are delivered successfully and on time is critical to running a successful ecommerce store. Ecommerce businesses, especially small start-ups, usually start small and handle all logistics processes of order processing to last mile delivery themselves. This is certainly a good way to get a small business off the ground, however by doing so in the long-term businesses limit their potential to grow.
Ecommerce fulfillment services are often handled by Third-Party Logistics (3PL) companies that specialise in inventory storage, order processing, picking items, packing boxes and last mile delivering of the goods to the customer’s shipping address. By outsourcing your logistics to a third-party fulfillment company, you essentially allow experts to ensure that your goods are safely stored, and your customers receive their orders on time. This can be particularly helpful to ecommerce businesses with no physical storage facility. Also, given that third-party logistics companies handle multiple customers, they have the buying power to negotiate competitive rates with suppliers and these benefits are shared amongst their portfolio of customers. All these benefits lead to considerable savings in time, resources and money as you will do away with managing your order fulfillment in-house. These savings can then be reinvested into marketing your brand and building your business.
In today’s modern world, ecommerce fulfillment is at the core of meeting customer expectations. Ecommerce brands that cannot provide 2-day shipping or a seamless delivery experience will be left behind as online shoppers will shop elsewhere for the online fulfillment experience that they have come to expect.
The best ecommerce fulfillment companies provide strategies to help transform your logistics from a cost center to a revenue-driver. One such company is B dynamic Logistics (BDL), based in New South Wales, which has stood out as one of Australia’s leading third-party ecommerce fulfillment service providers. Their team consists of industry experts that provide ecommerce customers with the strategies and solutions needed to meet today’s customer expectations, and to help scale these businesses successfully over time.
How to choose a third-party logistics partner to suit your ecommerce business?
If you’ve recently started an ecommerce business you’ve probably thought about warehousing, shipping, and fulfillment. Making sales is central to your business’ goals and is more often than not the key aspect that any start-up focuses on. But it’s also important to understand the customer experience from the point of sale up to the point of receiving your product to their front door.
Enter ecommerce fulfillment, which many might not consider to be as exciting as sales, but nevertheless equally important. Ecommerce fulfillment is a general term that refers to the process of receiving customer orders, picking goods from the point of storage, packing into boxes and shipping the packed goods to the customers. A successful ecommerce fulfillment process should be simple, efficient and cost effective. Other aspects to consider are inventory management, location of products within storage, packaging used to ship products to the end customer and facilitating last-mile deliveries to the end customer.
The two main benefits of handling your own fulfillment are that it is flexible and cheap. It is very common for new ecommerce businesses to handle their own logistics as they need to have better control over their limited cash flow to get the business started. Handling such complex parts of the business themselves usually helps with this at the beginning. However, if these businesses grow rapidly, they will require a more streamlined logistics solution to keep up with their increasing trade. The solution to this is outsourcing the fulfillment component of their ecommerce business to a third-party logistics company.
Most companies struggle with choosing the right third-party logistics (3PL) partner that can help them to grow their business. Given the number of 3PLs in the market, the task of choosing one may seem daunting. It is important to remember that like all businesses, each 3PL (ecommerce fulfillment partner) operates slightly differently, however the goal that they are trying to achieve remains the same: they are your one-stop shop for all ecommerce fulfillment needs.
B dynamic Logistics is one 3PL that has set itself apart from the rest with their simple yet effective motto – “We do it your way!”. Every business that they work with is provided with a tailor-made solution specific to that business’ needs. This approach is quite unique when compared to other 3PLs, who usually provide a “frame” which the customer needs to fit into, leaving little room for their business to grow. The expert team at B dynamic makes sure that they spend the time and effort to understand their customers’ business needs, find gaps in their existing business model and provide solutions for their business to grow exponentially over time.