Welcome to part two of our blog series! As mentioned last week, $2.86 trillion was spent worldwide in 2018. E-commerce is not slowing down. With that comes some problems that your business needs to fix. You want to ensure that your business continues to attract consumers, as well as keep up with your competition.
E-Commerce Order Fulfillment Problems
As stated, one of the problems that were noticed was managing capacity. Due to the steady incline of e-commerce, it puts pressure on existing resources. This leads to companies having to make new investments and exhaust their human resources. Customers have high expectations. A problem that businesses are having is not being able to meet those expectations, or competing with companies who can. Faster shipping times and regular notifications are some of these expectations that customers want, and look for, when ordering online.
Another common problem is locating your inventory and having a poor inventory management system. If you have a poorly organized warehouse and do not know where items are, it leads to shipping and delivery delays.
All of these problems result in inferior customer service and dissatisfied customers.
So now that you know what the most common e-commerce order fulfillment problems are, how can you fix them?
E-Commerce Order Fulfillment Solutions
Although problems are inevitable, businesses should have established procedures to identify problems before they occur and if a problem does happen, have a contingency to avoid it from happening again in the future. Here are five e-commerce order fulfillment solutions.
- Implement an inventory management system. By having a good system in place, it will make locating inventory faster and easier. This will result in contented customers because the faster an item is located, the faster it will be delivered.
- It costs your business money when customers receive wrong or damaged items. Quite possibly, they may not order from your company again. Having a controlled and organized warehouse can prevent damages to items. In addition, double-checking orders before sending them for delivery will prevent the wrong orders from leaving your warehouse.
- Consider automated processes for managing capacity and reducing shipping times. Once you have the processes in place, look into how you can speed it up to deal with the large amount of orders. This will also save money in labor costs throughout the fulfillment processes.
- Improving employee training and operations will also help to improve your overall order fulfillment. Administrative errors can cause a lot of problems; ensuring that there are procedures in place will help to make sure that the same mistakes are not being repeated. Furthermore, by improving employee training and operations, your staff will be more equipped to handle any customer complaints.
- Communicate. In most cases, almost every problem could have been caught sooner, or completely avoided, through better communication. It is a crucial to ensure a seamless operations.
Summary
E-commerce order fulfillment can cause a lot of problems. If you are able to pinpoint where those problems occur within your business, then you will be able to fix them. You want to master your e-commerce order fulfillment processes to ensure that you continue to attract customers and keep up with your competition.
