Business Development

The 5-Step Fulfillment Process That Professional Shipping Companies Offer

By Samik

5 Mins Read

Published on: 15 December 2022

Last Updated on: 14 October 2024

Fulfillment Process

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Do you feel overwhelmed when managing orders, packaging, and shipping goods? Are you looking for a way to streamline the order fulfillment process? Professional order fulfillment services can provide an efficient way to get your products into customers’ hands quickly and easily.

In this blog post, we’ll look in-depth at the five steps of the order fulfillment process that most professional shipping companies offer.

Fulfillment Process That Professional Shipping Companies Offer

Shipping companies follow a rigorous and detailed SOP when it comes to fulfillment. This procedure ensures safety and security. Hence, understanding this SOP is critical for any shipping company. 

In this section, we will look at these different processes to understand how a shipping company fulfills its order and delivers it. Therefore, please keep following this section to clarify the issue.

1. Deliver Items To The Warehouse

Professional fulfillment shipping is a multi-step process crucial to successful eCommerce businesses. To ensure the best delivery experience for customers, it pays to take each step in the process seriously.

Delivering to the Warehouse first is an integral part of this process. The Warehouse is a central hub for packing, weighing, and sorting items before they’re shipped out to customers.

Delivering packages directly to the warehouse helps streamline operations, ensuring orders are sent quickly and accurately. Professionals in this field understand how vital it is for orders to remain organized, making it easy for different steps like tracking and inputting information into databases.

Warehouse

2. Picking

Picking is the second step, an essential link between order allocation and packaging or dispatch. Picking is an integral part of order fulfillment services, and it’s not just randomly locating the order in the Warehouse.

It’s vital to get the order correctly and, of course, that it’s accurate. The selector should know what order quantity needs to be selected and then check whether that quantity is correct when working with a customer order.

Picking

3. Packing

Packing is a vital part of professional fulfillment shipping, ensuring the products being shipped reach their destination in perfect condition. When packing correctly and using quality materials, there is no risk of damage occurring in transit.

Professional packers must also be aware of the impact of packaging on shipping costs; efficient selection and use of packaging will help keep them to a minimum.

Packing

4. Shipping

Shipping is integral to the order fulfillment equation, allowing businesses to deliver items quickly and reliably without any manual effort. Professional order fulfillment services are a new way to efficiently dispatch goods to the customer.

This step helps customers receive their items safely and on time by taking advantage of streamlined shipping processes that utilize efficient handling methods.

Shipping

5. Returns

Returns allow customers to return an unwanted product for either an exchange or a refund, which builds trust and gives customers confidence that their money has not been wasted.

Having returns can often be seen as a burden or a hassle but having them in place is vital for customers to feel secure when ordering from a business. Businesses that don’t offer returns are often seen as untrustworthy by potential customers.

Returns

Bonus: How To Choose The Right Shipping Company?

We have already discussed the different fulfillment processes that Bigshot shipping companies offer. However, choosing the right shipping partner is not just about getting hold of the biggest name in the industry.

Therefore, we have decided to include this bonus section. In this bonus section, we will explore the right method for choosing the best international shipping companies.

Therefore, let us dive right in and understand the factors you need to know. 

Pricing & More

Pricing is definitely one of the most important factors when it comes to choosing the right shipping company. Always take quotations from multiple service providers. This would help you to assess where each one stands.

Pricing takes the cake when choosing the right shipping partner. However, quality and timeliness also play a major role. Therefore, you must tally the overall pricing with the quality of the service the company provides. 

If the pricing is justified, you should consider proceeding. Otherwise, look for more partners. 

Range Of Services

The range of services is the next thing that you must consider when choosing a shipping partner. It is very important to identify the services a company is providing. This would enable you to make a more informed choice.

Therefore, sit with the representative and inquire about the kind of services they are equipped to provide. Evaluate if one carrier is enough for your needs or if you need more. 

Try to be objective when making this assessment because this can help you understand the services you will get in the future. Therefore, be as comprehensive and detailed as possible. 

Reliability

The next factor that you need to consider is reliability. You cannot do business with a shipping partner if it does not deliver on time and effectively. Therefore, reliability should be high on your list of considerations.

Always go for businesses that have higher LOS rates. The LOS rate determines the quality of service a shipping company provides. Therefore, sit and inquire about the LOS rate in order to determine the quality of service. 

Potential consequences of choosing unreliable shipping services are financial failure, loss of business, loss of goods, and higher overhead costs. Therefore, only go for services that are reliable and cost-effective at the same time. 

Safety & Precaution

Last but not least, you need to pay special attention to security. Safety becomes paramount when it comes to shipping across borders. You never really know what might happen. Therefore, you must never compromise on security.

If you find two shipping companies with attractive rates, always go for the one that has a higher security rating. Security ratings are effective indicators of the quality of security and service a shipping company provides. 

Therefore, inquire about the quality of security your shipping provider offers in order to ensure the success rate of the delivery is optimal.

Additional:

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Samik

Samik is a writer with 2+ years of experience in his pocket and a genuine interest in supply chain and logistics industry. He’s inquisitive and an Epistemophile who loves exploring industries like supply chain, business, finance, etc. When taking a break from his curiosity for logistics, he can be seen hyping over global phenomenon, documentary films, and motorbikes.

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