Logistics and Order Fulfillment

Sometimes e-commerce businesses forget that the Internet is just another channel from which business can be conducted. Granted it is unique in some ways, but many of the same rules apply, especially when it comes to logistics and order fulfillment.

One of the last functions in the chain of customer-centric processes is the fulfillment of the customer’s order. Ensuring that the customer’s order is picked, packed, and shipped accurately is the final step in the typical online shopping process.

As online sales continue to explode three factors put new pressures on a website’s order fulfillment systems:

• The expansion of the product line offered to the online customer.
• The necessity of moving a large volume of small packages at breakneck speed.
• The task of meeting ever-growing customer expectations.

Websites that don’t address order fulfillment with the same energy as they jumped into the role of online selling will find themselves fighting an uphill battle for customer loyalty. E-commerce business can meet these demands by immediately taking the necessary steps to develop a fail-safe fulfillment system that delivers end-to-end logistics, i.e., package visibility and service continuity from the “buy” button to the final destination.

End-to-end logistics consist of three basic tenets:

• Empower your customers by keeping them informed and by providing self-service solutions that apply to common fulfillment issues.
• Stay focused on the quality and availability of the product.
• Speedy delivery of the product to the customer.

Running a sophisticated e-commerce site often means operating a warehouse (of course the warehouse may be your garage), pulling inventory from shelves and packing it for shipment, retaining a delivery service, helping customers track an order until it arrives, and dealing with returns. To do this successfully many e-commerce businesses will need to rely to some extent on automated solutions.

Customers have been led to believe through marketing and media hype that the Web is all about convenience. That is why so many come to the Web with the expectation that their online shopping will be quick and easy. Sadly, that is not always the reality.

Whether you are a small start-up business or operating an enterprise e-commerce site, coordinating and delivering at web speed is a tremendous challenge. Trying to meet your customers’ inflated expectations makes it even more difficult. But any e-commerce business that succeeds in meeting the challenge gains a tremendous competitive advantage.