E-Commerce Strategies: Top 5 Ways to Master Order Fulfillment

Order fulfillment is a hot topic these days.

It involves receiving, picking, packing, and shipping orders and often, companies with the best intentions fall victim to sluggish processes and gets bogged down by the admin of it all.

When your customer places an order, they will want that order as soon as humanly possible. If your order fulfillment is not handled well, it can lead to lost business.

For help improving your order fulfillment, follow these five tips below:

1. Inventory Optimization

Faster order fulfilment is the key to meeting the expectations of demanding shoppers.

Drive smarter inventory optimization strategies to empower your teams on the floor and increase sales. With connected systems that enable data-driven decisions, business owners can drive sustainable growth and access real-time insights, improving shopping experiences across any channel.

2. Order Picking Strategies

To improve tired order picking strategies you will need to focus on optimizing the layout of your warehouse.

Place frequently picked items near the shipping areas and implement the work-smarter-not-harder methodology.

Do not be afraid of technology – like systems that help to maintain accurate slotting, business-centric AI and robots that pick directly into shipping cartons, and batch picking for those larger orders.

The overall goal of a picking strategy is to minimize travel time for pickers whilst ensuring proper inventory management to help businesses succeed - including start-ups.

3. Logistic Partners

More and more businesses are choosing to outsource their logistics operations, freeing valuable time to focus on their core business activities.

Use a reputable partner like Ryder e-commerce services to reach a wider customer base and scale operations as needed.  To simplify workloads, choose a service with inventory management, order fulfillment, and returns management.

Ensure to choose a partner that can handle seasonal increases, unexpected surges, and welcomed peak periods.

4. Brainstorming

With the advent of the internet, the good, old-fashioned brainstorming sessions that got us through the 90s are all but a past relic. It is viewed as a ridiculed concept that angers Millennials and confuses Gen-X.

If only they knew of its power.

Brainstorming worked because it tapped into the minds of those people doing those jobs on a daily basis – and who knows a process better than someone who has thought of a hundred ways to do it faster?

Ask your employees what they think would help speed up the process – and offer a prize to the winners to sweeten the deal.

5. Improved Customer Communication

Improve the communication between your employees and customers by providing regular updates on order status, which will set clear expectations about delivery times.

To proactively manage your consumers, be transparent and upfront about your delivery fees and timelines. Provide multi-channel order status updates so your customers can choose the option that best suits them.

Lastly, always address customer concerns, questions, and complaints as quickly as possible; that impresses customers more than you think.

To End

The right fulfillment solution for you depends on the size of your business and the type of products or services you market.

Follow the above five tips for guidance on how best to navigate your e-commerce order fulfillment plans and implement the correct strategies.