Are There Inefficiencies in Your Order Fulfillment Processes?

Each step from the moment an order is received until the item arrives in the hands of the customer is what’s considered the order fulfillment process. Oftentimes this process has too many steps and is leading to inefficiencies in your organization. Today we will look at a few ways to improve the order fulfillment process.

Several challenges organizations face throughout the order fulfillment process are:

• Inventory Management: Orders that are placed need to be filled. This is difficult to accomplish if the items are out of stock. Keeping track of your stock levels in real time will help to manage expectations and prevent customers from being disappointed by fulfillment delays prior to purchasing an item.
• Supply Chain Execution: Should an item be low or out of stock, how long will it take to restock the item? How quickly will your vendors be able to supply more of the item and how long will it take to receive those items once they’re made?  The answers to these questions will impact your order fulfillment.
• Logistics Planning: After the out of stock items have been replaced what is the process to get them to the customer and how long will that take?

Regarding improving your order fulfillment process there are several steps you can take that may return higher efficiency. Have you slotted your inventory to ensure that it is stored as logically as possible? Once that has been done take a look at how you are utilizing the systems you already have in place. If you aren’t utilizing your systems they won’t be able to work for you. Lastly, if you have not yet invested in automation you can speed up your order fulfillment process by investing in a warehouse management system. Contact us for more information.