If you are running a successful online business, there may come a time when you no longer have the resources to store, pack and ship the goods yourself. If you are like many small business owners then you don’t have either the financial resources or the staff to store, pick, pack and deliver a growing number of orders. Should you have a business that is growing a lot faster than you anticipated, and you want to cash in on the upsurge in sales at Christmas, there are a number of things you need to have in place.
If you want to make as much profit as you can this Christmas, you might want to think about using ecommerce fulfilment services. When you don’t have the physical resources to cope with the needs of your growing business, you need to think about outsourcing them to a fulfilment warehouse. The fact is that fulfilment warehouses offer small businesses the chance to compete with high street nationals. You can cash in on Christmas once you decide to outsource the fulfilment of your orders. The things that you need in place, and that a company offering ecommerce fulfilment services can provide are storing and managing your stock or inventory, fulfilling your orders and processing any returns or exchanges.
Managing and Storing Inventory
Your inventory or stock is stored off site in a fulfilment warehouse and this means you can have more stock and a greater variety of things – ideal if you want to cash in on Christmas. The warehouse will take delivery of and manage your stock. Most companies that offer fulfilment services have their own web application that you can log into to see your stock and look at the history of everything in the inventory.
Fulfilling Orders Automatically
When you use fulfilment services, the company will usually except any orders from your site through a web based application, possibly emailed orders from you or invoices or spreadsheets of orders emailed to the warehouse directly When the warehouse receives the orders the products are picked from the inventory, packed and shipped off to the buyer. You should be able to use the web to login and check an order’s progress. Some companies may provide tracking numbers to the customer so they can keep a check on its status.
Processing Returns and Exchanges
Returns and exchanges are quite common in internet sales because the customer has not actually seen the product working, or tried on the garment. The fulfilment company will examine returns and exchanges, send out new items and return goods to stock or into a bin for damaged items.
When you choose to take advantage of a fulfilment service you will have all the necessary things in place to help you compete with businesses much bigger than your own. The extra money that you make, especially in the run up to Christmas, will be more than enough to cover the cost of fulfilment services.
This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Hallmark Consumer Services, experts in ecommerce fulfilment.
