It’s the economic law of the jungle: some businesses succeed, and some do not. Often times, it’s almost impossible to predict which ones will live and which will perish at their beginnings. The best-laid plans, as the old saying goes, are still nevertheless insufficient protection against bad decision making, bad timing, and lack of foresight. Most will experience many of their defining problems as a result of order fulfillment, or delivery of requested products.
So if it’s almost impossible to tell which businesses will fail at the beginning, when does the forecast become more obvious? Usually several months or sometimes a year or two down the road opens a window into a business’ fate. The staff and management have gotten comfortable in their roles, the fulfillment systems are in place, and the customer base is beginning to take shape. Perhaps the company’s web profile is also taking on its dimensions.
The Big Setback
Inevitably, a company must reconcile its fulfillment demands. Companies that grow too fast can experience this “tipping point” as a sudden spasm of logistics difficulties. Other companies, those steadier in their rate of growth, can sometimes predict when their fulfillment demands will overcome their resources. But this moment needs to be confronted, and confronted decisively, for the sake of the business’ continued success. Because troubled fulfillment is the proverbial monkey wrench thrown into the company’s day to day operations. Without sufficient logistics management, the company cannot continue to build or even maintain its profit margin, with mounting expenses absorbing ever diminishing revenues.
The Outsourcing Solution
Faced with such a daunting scenario, many businesses, both in the “real world” and online, choose to outsource their logistics management and order fulfillment needs to an independent, third party concern. These highly specialized, flexible companies specialize in inventory management and order fulfillment for many companies at the same time, allowing them to create a finely-tuned, cost-minimized system of processing and delivery that outmatches anything most small businesses could manage working on their own.
The fulfillment houses typically derive their service charges by deducting a percentage of every product handled. Though this can possibly seem expensive for some startup businesses, in reality the pricing structure provides the fulfillment service company with a powerful incentive to handle their clients’ products quickly and capably. The more products fulfilled on their clients’ behalf, the greater their own prfotis.