More Order, More Sales With Retail Fulfillment

By Author: Dave
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Retail fulfillment is the subcategory of B2B fulfillment wherein it encompasses the processes for bringing all the items together in an order such as packaging and ship them to the retailers. This is very important as the customer needs fast and accurate transaction for them to remain loyal and patronize your products and services. Bad experience from retail fulfillment will give advantage to your competitors and will lead them to buy goods from them. Every business needs to have a retail fulfillment well organized so the customer can easily track their order, know the estimated time of arrival and receive their items in well-packed and good condition.

Retail fulfillment process

1. Receive inventory – selling products means you would need inventory. This must be sent to your fulfillment center to be stored. However, if you have your own retail fulfillment, it will require you to have a warehouse management.

2. Warehousing – keeping your stock and set reorder points so you can prevent items from stockouts.

3. Picking items – this when a customer place an order and comes in your queue ...
... to generate the list and fulfill the order.

4. Packing orders – after picking the items, you need to pack them to protect the item from any damage that will affect its order condition.

5. Shipping – once done packing, you need to ship the items and set an estimated delivery date so the customer will know when to expect their order.

6. Return processing – this happens when a customer returns an order, and ecommerce orders are likely to be and must be prepared to avoid more hassles and costs.

Models of Retail Fulfillment

a. In-house model – this is where the business does everything from inventory down to shipment of items. This is best applicable for small businesses with low order volume since they can handle packing less order per day.

b. Third-Party fulfillment (3PL model) – merchants outsource a 3PL partner to fulfill the order. In this way, the merchant can do other task than doing all the order filling process. This can help the business scale and grow faster.

c. Drop shipping model – in this type of model, a business does not hold any inventory but rather, they only accept the order and the manufacturer that creates the product will do the shipment of the product to the customer. It requires less investment, very flexible and can prove out a product concept.

How to optimize your retail fulfillment

• Select fulfillment Centre – the closer fulfillment center to your customers, the more that it is affordable and easier to ship.

• Integrated fulfillment software – you need to have an integrated software with your ecommerce platform so it will be well organized and simple to follow thru the process and track information. In this way, you can let your customer know when the time of arrival of their orders will be.

• Shipping Time – customers don’t want to wait too long, that is why choosing for a strategical location of your distribution center is essential you expedite costs.

Many ecommerce business and brands that are continuously growing sees retail fulfillment as one of their steps for growth and development. It is associated with higher stakes so a much higher level for quality control must be done for a retail fulfillment to be successful. Most of this success includes optimizing network efficiency, speed, and flexibility by knowing and identifying what matters most to their customers.

Learn more information about retail fulfillment by visiting our website https://www.markettplace.com.au