As a leading order fulfillment company, at Shipfusion, we work with plenty of clients who own startups but aren’t really sure how order fulfillment services work.
Simply put, an order fulfillment service provider is a company that fulfills orders on behalf of your company. This includes receiving orders, processing them and delivering them to end consumers. This definition can apply to any sort of order handling like B2B or D2C orders.
The 4 Steps Of Order Fulfillment Services
Step#1 Receive Orders
Even when you are handling it in-house, the first step to order fulfillment is receiving the inventory from your suppliers and manufacturers. Whether you connect us directly with your suppliers or choose to send over the inventory yourself, once received, we do the following:
- Make sure that the number of items match the number sent by you
- Carefully inspect items to see if they are damaged
- Record SKUs in the management software
- Apply barcodes or SKUs if the labels don’t have them
Step#2 Store Inventory
Once inventory has been inspected and accounted for, it is time to store it. Appropriate storage is one of the most important aspects of order fulfillment. The SKUs are designated an individual storage on the shelf for quick access. At the same time, the most selling SKUs are placed close to order packing stations.
Step#3 Process Orders
Once your inventory has been inspected, sorted and placed, it is time to process orders.
The first step is order booking. Once customers order products from your website, we receive notifications instantly. Our management software can be easily integrated with your existing cart, meaning all your orders are automatically received.
The orders are then picked off the warehouse shelves and moved over to the packing station. The packing station conducts a number of quality checks to identify the best packing material, add labels or slips to later seal the box. It is then moved to the shipping station.
Step#4 Time To Ship
Once an order has been packed, it is forwarded to shipping stations to be delivered to customers. Here, the package is weighed to identify the best shipping service based on speed and costs.
Shipping service providers are also responsible for providing order tracking information for customers and sellers.
Even though smaller companies have simpler shipping needs like the ones US Postal Services offer, other companies may have specific requirements, which may make shipping more complex.
Shipfusion sets your business on autopilot and combines flexible, reliable fulfillment with powerful, real-time technology. Shipfusion has multiple fulfillment centers across the US and Canada– making it easy to manage your eCommerce business. For more information on how to set your business on autopilot, contact one of our fulfillment specialists today.
