Fulfilment is the entire process from the moment a customer places an order to the moment it arrives. In other words: storing your stock, picking the right products from the shelf, packing them, shipping them and processing any returns afterwards. If you outsource that, you work with a fulfilment partner or fulfilment centre.
The steps of fulfilment
- 1Receiving and putaway: your supplier delivers your stock. The fulfilment partner counts, checks and books everything in.
- 2Storage: your products get a fixed location in the warehouse, on a pallet, a shelf or in bins.
- 3Order picking: an order comes in through your webshop, marketplace or ERP. A picker takes the right items from the shelf.
- 4Packing: the products are packed securely, with a packing slip or delivery note.
- 5Shipping: the parcel or pallet leaves with a carrier. Your customer receives a track-and-trace code.
- 6Returns: whatever comes back is checked, registered and put back into stock or set aside.
Fulfilment is more than parcels
When people think of fulfilment, most picture webshop parcels. But many SMEs also sell to shops, wholesalers or supermarkets. Then you ship cartons with a delivery note or full pallets with special labels. That's called B2B fulfilment, as opposed to B2C fulfilment for consumers. You can read about the difference in our article on B2B and B2C fulfilment.
There's also technical fulfilment: storing and shipping spare parts and accessories for technicians and dealers. We wrote a separate article on that too: what is technical fulfilment?
Do it yourself or outsource?
At first, most companies do it themselves. It's cheap and you keep everything in your own hands. Outsourcing becomes interesting when:
- your team spends more time packing than selling;
- you've run out of space for your stock;
- you can no longer handle peaks, such as the holiday season;
- a retailer comes on board with strict delivery requirements;
- you want to sell internationally.
You'll find more signs in 7 signs it's time to outsource fulfilment.
What does fulfilment cost?
A fulfilment price usually consists of a few fixed building blocks: receiving, storage per month, a price per order, packaging, shipping and returns. Sometimes there are one-off costs for integrations. Because every partner charges for these differently, it's best to compare quotes based on your own volumes. How to do that is explained in what does fulfilment cost?
What to look for in a fulfilment partner
- Does it fit your orders? Parcels, pallets and spare parts each need a different approach.
- Integrations: does it work with your webshop, marketplaces and ERP?
- Cut-off: what's the latest time an order can come in and still ship the same day?
- Availability: do you have a dedicated contact person or a ticketing system?
- Contract: how long are you tied in, and do you get your data and stock back when you leave?
Sendwit is a fulfilment partner for Belgian SMEs with complex orders: parcels, cartons and pallets from one stock, and spare parts for technicians. Orders before 18:00 ship the same working day. See what we do for e-commerce and retail fulfilment and technical fulfilment.