Outsourcing Your Fulfillment Services
Have you ever considered dedicating time to growing your business by outsourcing your product fulfillment services? Fulfillment companies represent your business. They are experts in warehouse logistics and are able to give more attention to the distribution process than you, in most cases.
Do a cost-benefit analysis. Look at the products you are thinking about outsourcing. Compare what it costs to do them in-house compared to the cost of doing this outside. This analysis is done by taking into account financial costs and benefits as well as the customer satisfaction factor. You may think that you don’t need to outsource, but find that you cannot provide this service effectively. This is especially true if your business experience sudden growth. At any rate, it is definitely worth spending the money.
Ask about their drop ship services.Using the Drop Shipping business model is one of the best avenues for home-based business because you don’t have to carry any inventory. You can sell any number of items from your home and not have to worry about having the storage space. Someone else stocks the product and takes care of the e-commerce fulfillment and shipping. The big downside of using a drop ship service is that your costs will be higher. They are another party in the transaction (a middleman) and they will markup each product in order to be profitable.
Gather information about what you could outsource and then determine which products will be outsourced. Get a good estimate of how many orders you are going to process through these services. Decide if you get a national or regional company to do your fulfillment services based on the market your business serves.
Search for the best fulfillment services provider.Research on the Internet for both compliments and related to the contractor you are considering. Search and review their websites and contact their customer service. Your aim is to find the best quality at the best cost and preferably a well established, direct-to-consumer company.
Select the appropriate vendor. Get a service agreement and review the contract document carefully before signing with a fulfillment services company. Provide the selected company with complete details about your business to help them tailor their service to your needs.
The benefits of outsourcing fulfillment services are countless. Below are just a few:
• Ability to manage sales effort
• Improved efficiency and reliability
• Improved customer service & retention
Other than services and cost, another important factor to discuss is if the fulfillment house can accept orders from your shopping cart software.