Is your e-commerce business planning for growth? Outsourcing your order fulfilment can remove a massive amount of the heavy lifting, saving you thousands in expenses and freeing your resources to focus on growth and not logistics.
Order fulfilment is one of the most challenging and volatile realms to navigate as an e-commerce business. The scope for scale in e-commerce sales is extraordinary and the demands and expectations of online consumers have never been higher with most online shoppers expecting next-day and even same-day deliveries.
Forward-thinking businesses are tapping into third party e-commerce fulfilment solutions and spending more time innovating and growing their core operations, capitalising on the scalability of online sales rather than cowing to it.
A recent survey by DHL reveals that retailers of all sizes – including small-scale, medium-scale, and Fortune 500 companies – are planning to outsource all their online order fulfilment to third-party logistics (3PLs) collaborators within the next five years.
The survey further reveals that online retailers that previously fulfilled orders independently are now moving towards outsourcing, while many companies are pursuing a hybrid approach towards order fulfilment.
In the context of this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of order fulfilment for your e-commerce brand. Here’s everything you need to know:
Benefits of Outsourcing Ecommerce Order Fulfilment
The benefits of outsourcing e-commerce fulfilment are vast and wide-ranging. For instance, businesses can enjoy reduced operating costs and reduced shipping rates. They can delegate menial and time-consuming tasks, and expand their reach by penetrating new markets and consumer audiences.
1. Freeing up Time
Both large and small businesses are increasingly tapping into the potential of delegating order fulfilment and putting an end to the hassle of filling out shipping forms, arranging the packaging, and other chores involved with order fulfilment.
As a business owner or manager, you have much to gain with this decision. You can leave all of the time-consuming logistics to your order fulfilment provider, reducing operating costs and ensuring efficiency and you can reallocate your time and resources towards growing and expanding your business and online sales.
2. Reduce Your Shipping Costs
Are you planning to cater to consumers all over the country, or perhaps you’re seeking to reach out to international consumers as well? Maybe you are already selling internationally and are looking to scale?
Many order fulfilment providers maintain robust logistical infrastructure and facilities throughout local, countrywide, and international destinations. They can offer robust and reliable shipping networks that allow you to reap the benefits of lower shipping costs, as well as much quicker delivery times.
Most outsource fulfilment providers deploy high-tech tools to browse through competitive shipping rates offered by a huge network of carriers, allowing them access to the most economical shipping rates in the market.
It’s crucial to examine shipping rates before choosing your order fulfilment provider.
3. Lower Your Operating Expenses
As an e-commerce business, are you ready to invest the thousands needed for warehousing, storage, staff and shipping in order to scale and grow?
Can you imagine channelling more than half of that money to invest in new technologies, acquire specialised talent, or boost your marketing campaigns?
Outsourced fulfilment can help you reduce your operating expenses significantly, making significant savings that can be reallocated throughout other areas for company growth.
Order fulfilment also allows you to pay only for the services you require. Instead of enormous capital costs and wage bills, you are charged a flat warehousing fee for the storage of your products, and the charges for distribution, packaging, and shipping are done per order, and are also significantly reduced.
And all of your costs are scalable, both up and down in a way that internal structures simply can’t achieve. Aside from the seasonal increments or reductions in sales volumes, the operational costs should remain highly stable and consistent while working with order fulfilment providers.
4. Improve Your Customer Service
Working with well-established prominent order fulfilment providers also allows businesses and online retailers to improve their customer service experiences.
Order fulfilment providers can provide reliable customer service support, and your customers can reach them through email or phone if they require refunds, exchanges, or returns. Not only do you dramatically reduce the number of enquiries and returns that your staff has to deal with, but you can deliver a much better brand experience for your customers, improving the chance of repeat purchases and a boost in positive word-of-mouth publicity.
5. Penetrate New Markets
The right order fulfilment provider can transform your business by increasing your reach dramatically.
Most e-commerce businesses require several years to build the infrastructure and gain the financial security needed to scale into new national or international markets. Modern-day businesses who outsource their fulfilment don’t have to wait that long to extend their reach.
Outsourcing your fulfilment allows your business to go global and penetrate new markets across the world without the time and money required to do so internally. And, with the right provider, your marketing, sales and conversions rates should all improve beyond what would be attainable otherwise, streamlining the growth you need and helping you to achieve your objectives much more quickly.
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You can eliminate all the hassle involved in storing and shipping products, catering for customer returns and refunds, and instead focus your energies and resources towards designing new product lines and boosting your marketing campaigns to reach out to newer consumer markets.
In short, outsourcing your ecommerce order fulfilment allows you to save on costs and grow quickly.
To speak to a member of our team about outsourcing your ecommerce fulfilment, get in touch. You can email us at enquires@parcelplanet.com, call us on +353 1 902 9510 or +44 1 6043 00340 or fill out our contact form here. We’re standing by to help.
