Order fulfillment is a challenge for any online store owners, you need to meet the needs of your customers. It is important to improve order fulfillment process.
What is the order fulfillment process?
Order fulfillment process starts with a customer purchasing items and ends once they receive it. As we all know the full process for sellers is receiving orders, processing and delivering packages to buyers. However, there are many processes that are ignored, for example, picking from warehouses, packing orders, shipping to logistics. It may involve refund or returns.In the full process, you may do something wrong, for example,
- Shipping late
- Damaged products are packed and shipped
- Pick wrong products from warehouse
- Products are out of stock
- Inefficient working
To avoid these order processing errors and increase efficiency , I will tell you 4 ways to improve the order fulfillment process.
4 Ways to Improve Order Fulfillment Process
1. Recognize the shipping deadlineThere is a shipping deadline or expiration time for all orders you received from your buyers, for example, Shopee and Lazada platforms. It means you need to ship this order before this deadline, or this order will be canceled.
You need to recognize the shipping deadline for all orders and process those orders that reach the deadline firstly. In this way, you can avoid canceled orders, reduce late shipment rate and satisfy your customers. Also, you can recognize your order fulfillment cycle time and ship the packages to your customers on time.
2. Make it easy to find products in warehouse
There are several ways to manage your warehouse effectively. The important one is to plan the layout of your warehouse, you need to make it easy to find products.
You need to meet quick-picking and quick-packing demands for warehouse staff. You can categorize your products and shelves, in this way, you can manage your warehouse effectively. Besides, you can put the best sale products to the easy-find warehouse locations and near to the packing location. In this way, the staff can pick and pack products easily and improve the order fulfillment process.
3. More accurate inventory counting
Inventory counting is the physical verification of the stock and condition of products that are in stock. It can help you monitor inventory in your warehouse and make sure the stock is consistent in your managing system and warehouse.
With inventory counting, you can know how many stocks are in your warehouse, condition of products, inventory problems, and improve the order fulfillment process. Besides, you can know the problem of your warehouse through inventory counting. You can solve these problems and improve the efficiency.
4. Utilize safety stock
You need to make sure you have enough stock to ship to your customers and prevent overselling. One way to solve the stock problem is through safety stock.
Safety stock is an extra quantity of a product which is stored in the warehouse to prevent an out-of-stock situation. It serves as insurance against fluctuations in demand and covers you until your next batch of ordered stock arrives. You should measure your sales data and determine the exact safety stock for every product.
If you want to get a reminder when there is low stock in your warehouse, you can try BigSeller. You can set safety stock and it will remind you when there are low-stock products of your warehouse in BigSeller Dashboard.