Order Fulfillment Software
A winning strategy for any eCommerce and distribution business is an integrated and efficient order fulfilment service. It’s not a big deal for retailers because customers visit their brick-and-mortar store and buy what they need. However, if you own an eCommerce store or a logistics company you need to deliver products to the customers. Here, the entire order management becomes far more challenging. Fortunately, a well-optimized fulfillment strategy paired with an innovative order fulfilment software can make everything easier for you.
The on-time delivery of products in good condition is crucial to make your business thrive. This makes it essential for the businesses to optimize order fulfilment process. Seamless order processing is critical to the overall health of your business.
Let’s take a look at some common strategies that can help companies optimize fulfilment process for improved productivity, cost saving and a lot more.
Best practices for well-optimized fulfillment process:
Well, there is no standard to bring you a miraculous fulfillment strategy that fits businesses of all types and all scales. However, are some commonly observed, tried and tested practices that can help you optimize your order fulfillment service for better throughput.
Real-time inventory management
Streamline your order fulfilment process through accurate inventory management. Accuracy is the backbone of everything involved in your business operations. One error and you can lose huge bucks and that also at the cost of losing loyal customers. If you do not want customer satisfaction to suffer, you must maintain inventory accuracy. It’s crucial to manage your inventory with all stock-in, stock-out and dead stock data at your fingertips.
The health of your warehousing operations also depends on inventory accuracy and real-time cycle counts so that customers cannot order anything that’s out of stock. With real-time inventory management you can keep your fulfilment warehouse well-organized. Also, a consistent check on your inventory levels will allow you to make well-informed decisions – ramp up or slow down the production process.
Integrate a smart warehouse system
An automated warehousing process eventually makes your order fulfillment process more efficient. Warehousing market, today, might not stand a second without automated systems. It makes slotting and picking processes more streamlined and thereby making your fulfilment centers much more productive.
With a fully integrated software solution, your pick and pack warehouse will have improved efficiency, more data accuracy, and help you remove human input from time-intensive tasks. It’s hard to manually hunt down a product and bring it to packing, and then shipping. Automate your items slotting and picking processes using a warehouse management system and hence, it will reduce the order fulfillment and shipping cost.
Ensure slotting optimization for quick picking
It’s one of the most useful strategies that help manage picking processes in your warehouse and distribution centers. It allows you to store the most popular items in close proximity to each other and to the starting point of picking – minimizing the walk time. With slotting optimization, you can efficiently store and handle your products that will eventually speed up your online order fulfillment process.
You can also store and pick items in relation to their weight, shape, size and general fragility. It’s common sense to pick the most fragile item in the end to avoid its damage due to heavier items. So, better store them in the area where you can pick them in the end. This strategic approach will also mitigate safety risk associated with order management.
Improved supply chain management and visibility
Supply chain management is a foundational element in streamlining your order processing. Better visibility of your logistics and supply chain chores will give you a greater insight into product orders, tracking production and shipments – giving you significant control of your supply chain operations.
You can easily collect data from your order fulfillment system to check what’s hurting your supply chain business. For instance, you may find worker’s negligence or shipping vendors using sub-optimal routes, etc. The combined effect of all such low-performing activities will slow down your order fulfillment services. Undoubtedly, you cannot improve your fulfilment process until you have better management and visibility of your supply chain.
Final Thoughts
It’s important to determine a winning strategy founded on best practices to ensure order fulfilment health – critical to your business health. Make your order fulfilment process run seamlessly, saving you time and money, and eliminate any potential bottlenecks to keep your business competitive and growing. You must consider investing in a fully integrated, highly scalable and innovative order fulfillment system for your growing business.
MWI Solutions offers an innovative software solution for order management and healthy fulfilment process. All your products, sales orders, customers, transactions and shipment data will be automated, synced and secured in the cloud.
