4 Ways to Improve Order Fulfillment

If you’re a first-time ecommerce business owner or just starting a new online marketing business from scratch, you may not need the end-to-end fulfillment service that we at Dare Marketing offer.  We’re ready to work with you when your business is large enough that you no longer feel fulfillment is core to your operation, and you would like to outsource it to a fulfillment house like Dare.

Until that time, we’d like to help you grow your business.

Since optimizing order fulfillment will lead to greater customer satisfaction, we like to share with you a few ways that you can improve your order fulfillment. So we asked Michael Koploy, Analyst at Software Advice  (website) and blog manager of Warehouse Management Systems Guide (website) for his thoughts.  Michael has recently put together a fulfillment starter’s guide for first-time ecommerce business owners. In the guide, Michael emphasizes that business owners focus on the following:

1. Establish a Fulfillment Baseline: Start by measuring the metrics that matter most to your fulfillment operation. These metrics will be closely aligned with your customer service creed. For example, if next-day shipping is important to your business, focus on measuring order turnaround time.
    
2. Implement Technology to Improve Metrics: Business owners should invest in technology that can help improve the established fulfillment metrics. For example, if orders are getting lost or you’re finding that merchandise is unexpectedly going out of stock, consider investing in an improved barcoding and inventory management solution.
    
3. Assign Specialized Fulfillment Experts: Once your operation grows to the point that you need to hire employees specifically to assist with fulfillment, have them specialize in order processing, picking, packing or shipping. This allows them to become experts, improve your operation’s efficiency, and empowers them to find new ways to make their tasks safer, quicker and more accurate.
    
4. Know When to Outsource: It’s also important to realize when it’s necessary to ask for the assistance of fulfillment experts.  For example, if you believe that your time, resources and team members can be better spent focusing on marketing, customer service and merchandising, you should outsource fulfillment to allow your company to properly grow. 

You can obtain more tips for fulfillment by reading Koploy’s guide: The Starter’s Guide to Effective eCommerce Fulfillment.

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