MAY 07, 2021
An important part of e-commerce success is fulfilment. No amount of technology — world-class website, user-friendly ordering app, savvy email marketing or even a large catalogue — can get customer delight if you can’t deliver the product on time in full.
Inefficiency in E-Commerce Fulfilment often leads to:
All of the above problems can be overcome with a single solution: A robust 4-pronged approach to order fulfilment.
The first step towards operational efficiency is inventory management. You need a warehouse management system that enables you to manage your stock and process shipping efficiently. Make sure it enables a robust strategy for location management, picking and putaway, inventory and batch management. This will help store your inventory in an easily accessible and reachable manner.
Also, look for a WMS with a multi-product shipment function, with the ability to ship multiple child SKUs as one shipment. This will prevent incomplete shipments from going out.
Not all fulfilment centres are the same. Depending on the product you’re selling, you need a fulfilment centre that’s designed for you. For instance, a client of ours in the business of selling furniture needed a fulfilment centre with pallet racking, load unit/best-fit evaluation and finalisation. Given the size of their products, they also needed a furniture warehouse with a customised layout to make the maximum use of storage space. We enabled this for them.
Moreover, while choosing a fulfilment centre, remember to ensure that it can be managed through your chosen WMS.
Returns are inevitable. You can minimise them but never eliminate them completely. The best you can do is process returns efficiently and address complaints on time. A good fulfilment process should enable this for you.
Customers today are used to real-time tracking of their delivery — be it their food or their new sofa set. Real-time tracking gives customers the information they seek on-demand, significantly reducing customer service enquiries.
On the other hand, it also gives you clearly and timely visibility into your orders’ status, even when handled by a logistics partners. It allows you to control the customer experience, taking proactive steps in case of delays.
It is these four pillars that Delhivery’s Fulfilment offerings rest on. We operate over 71 fulfilment centres across India, with over 6 million sq. feet of storage and processing space.
