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One of the leading questions small business owners have about outsourcing their order fulfillment and logistics management obligations concerns the timing of the shift to the new service provider company.
Naturally, and with good reason, business owners fear making their transition at an inopportune time, causing an upset or disruption in their own carefully constructed fulfillment systems.
But what is the ideal time to outsource your warehousing, processing, and shipment preparation needs to a third party independent company? Is there a certain time of the year, or a better month to shift than others? The answer is surprisingly simple, within a certain context.
The truth is that there is never a right time to outsource, and never a wrong time. To put it another way, there’s never a bad time to outsource your order fulfillment. It’s an important step in the life of your business, and as such there’s no sense in putting it off. Rather, embrace the change for what it can bring to your business.
What Your Business Gains
When you outsource your fulfillment, you gain the benefits of expanded warehousing and storage, the knowhow of a trained and efficient staff, and the precision of expertly laid out processing and shipment preparation systems. More importantly, you get the advantage of additional space, and room to grow. When you outsource, you’re no longer bound and contained within the warehousing and fulfillment space that you alone can manage to obtain and administrate. The service provider company oversees all aspects of the storage and maintenance obligations.
What Your Business Loses
You business will trim operating costs, reducing the need to outlay valuable resources towards trying to manage the growing fulfillment needs that expand every time your business gains a new customer. You won’t have to struggle to find great warehousing staff or customer service workers. Instead, you’ll gain the free time to devote to other projects that can help develop your business’ front end, including marketing and promotion, so that your customer base grows even further.
Fulfillment services can help you develop a market presence for your business using direct mail marketing campaigns and other marketing tools. These powerful tools allow you greater flexibility when planning your new objectives, and these strengths can really help your business to grow.
