Understanding the order fulfillment process will go a long way to helping you streamline your business.
Is your SME in need of a boost? Let’s face it, Coronavirus has us all in the same boat, and most of us fighting over customers. If your business needs a little streamlining, understanding order fulfillment should be a key point of concern.
We took a look at the 6 major steps involved in fulfilling customer orders to highlight any areas you may feel could be improved upon within your company. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all it takes to make a difference. And that difference could be putting dollars back in your pocket.
The 6 Major Steps to Exemplary Order Fulfillment
Need to streamline the order fulfillment process? You have come to the right place.
1 – Hire a Specialist
Product and order fulfillment is a niche area of business, so you know there are people out there capitalizing on this. When considering your fulfillment processes, calling in an expert is the difference between calling in a plumber or trying to fix the leaking sink yourself. Don’t take any chances. https://redstagfulfillment.com/order-fulfillment/ provides small, large, ecommerce, and manufacturing companies with reliable product fulfillment that meets customer needs.
2 – Accepting the Orders
When your business first takes an order is where you start looking for ways you can improve. The order arrives and is logged in the system somehow. Failures at this stage will mean you have orders lost or go missing, and a high volume of clients chasing goods that should have already arrived.
3 – Putting the Order Together
Order execution is the next step in the process. During this step, you check what is being ordered and put that order together. This means checking for any ordering that you need to do yourself, in the process. Do you have a stock control system that reorders on your behalf? Do you have to order certain components for your goods from outside sources? Do you use a printing service, for example?
Once the order has been put together, we can move on to step 4.
4 – Order Checking
The order must be checked, and then triple checked before it leaves your firm. This stage is a good time to print off the order invoices or the packaging slips needed for postage. Again, names and addresses should be checked for clarity.
5 – Do your own Orders
Before you can deliver the item, you need to have a system of delivery in palace. This means you need to retrieve stamps, or use tracking information, or visit the USPS to place your delivery order to make sure it gets there. This pre-postage stage is counted as a process in itself because it can always be singled out for streamlining.
Imagine if you sent 20 parcels a week to the tune of $200. Now imagine that you find out FedEx has a cheaper parcel service that could save you $2 on each parcel. Streamlining your shipping process should arguably start here.
6 – Sending your Order
The final stage is ensuring that your client receives the package, either because you posted it to them, or it has been placed in their hands. Until the client signs for collection of the package, you do not know whether the order is complete or not. Sending your order includes from the moment it leaves your hands to the moment it arrives in the customers hands.
Further thoughts on Streamlining Order Fulfillment
If you wish to further streamline order fulfillment processes, you can examine each of these steps in your own company to see how it works. There are often small ways we can make improvements.
