If any of these apply to you then it’s probably time to start thinking about outsourcing your order fulfilment:
- You are getting more than 100 orders every month
- You are running out of storage space
- You are receiving notifications of late or incorrect deliveries
- You are struggling to stay in control of your stock
- Much of your time is spent on order fulfilment
- You have thought about employing someone or renting warehouse space (outsourcing your order fulfilment will be much cheaper than employing staff or paying for warehouse space you may not need during quieter times)
- You are prioritising order fulfilment over marketing and growth opportunities
- Your business is being restricted due to lack of space for stock or capacity for orders
- Your warehouse leases are soon ending
- Your order levels are likely to continue to increase
The truth is, no business will look to outsource their fulfilment from the word ‘go’. Unless you have an aggressive growth strategy in place or are an established brand in other markets experiencing demand from further afield already, outsourcing would not initially be cost-effective.
Most businesses will look to outsource their fulfilment once they have established a stable number of sales each and every month. Business owners will at this stage want to reclaim their time being spent on managing staff, organising stock, picking, packing, arranging delivery and processing returns. The cost of outsourcing will then be less than the costs that you are currently incurring. Once fulfilling your orders in-house is having a detrimental effect on further deploying business strategy and growth, outsourcing this function will take a huge weight off of your shoulders.
The longer your business keeps running without professional order fulfilment, the more you risk losing the reputation you’ve worked so hard to earn. In these days of social media and online reviews, one bad customer experience can damage your brand like never before. That’s a lot of pressure for e-commerce business owners to be under.
There will ultimately never be a good time to implement this decision. The idea of packing up all of your stock and shipping it off to another warehouse will be daunting and you will be concerned as to how smoothly the transition will go. However, if you find the right fulfilment partner, they will have managed and executed this change on behalf of businesses many times before – they will have the process finely tuned and you need not worry.
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