5 Fulfillment Tips Every Growing Ecommerce Brand Needs To Know

Global online retail sales are climbing at record-breaking pace, giving new brands the opportunity to launch and scale within the same year.
Scaling your online business requires four crucial aspects to come together seamlessly to create something of beauty: product innovation, marketing campaigns, target audience engagement, and fulfillment.
Fulfillment is one of the most critical brand touchpoints because only a smooth delivery service can convert customers into loyal brand ambassadors.
This article will teach you five fulfillment tips every growing e-commerce brand needs to know.
1. Demand Forecasting
Striking the perfect balance between supply and demand can be challenging, particularly for new e-commerce brands.
What was popular last season might not be popular this year, and overstocking just throttles cash flow and shoots up storage costs.
The solution doesn’t lie in a crystal ball; it lies in accurate demand forecasting.
Use historical data, current trends, and the power of technology to project how much inventory your brand will need in the future.
2. Automated Order Processing
Your e-commerce brand cannot scale effectively while it is being choked by the bottlenecks that come with manual order processing.
As your order volumes increase, data entry mistakes increase along with them and the lack of real-time order updates quickly erode customer trust and satisfaction.
Automated order processing is the first step you should take to streamline fulfillment, eliminate errors, and deliver the smoothest customer experience possible.
3. 3PL Fulfillment
As an e-commerce brand grows, their fulfillment becomes increasingly complex, and often involves several warehouses, courier partners, and Omni-channel sales.
What worked for a handful of orders each week can quickly crumbled under the pressure of hundreds or thousands.
As your brand grows, don’t get caught up in a never-ending in-house juggling act. Outsourcing your fulfillment needs can free up time and keep your customers happy at the same time.
Third-party logistics (3PL) providers can step in and offer scalable solutions that your brand needs and might not know how to ask for.
Choose a fulfillment partner that operates multiple warehousing and fulfillment centers located near major cities and transportation hubs, like the Kase fulfillment network. That will allow you to scale your operations while offering timely order fulfillment.
4. Track Key Metrics
The best way to maintain control and grow successfully is by tracking critical fulfillment metrics so your teams can make data-driven decisions rather than educated guesses.
Some of the most important metrics include order accuracy rates, on-time delivery rates, inventory turnover ratios, and return rates and reasons.
Order accuracy rates measure how often your team fulfill orders correctly, which translates into your customers getting precisely what they purchased.
On-time delivery rates are self-explanatory.
Order return rates and reasons might seem simple at first, but once you dig in a little deeper you will soon discover they can be more complex.
5. Quality Control
In the competitive world of e-commerce, the focus is often placed on speed first as a priority. Brands often think that efficiency and lightning-fast deliveries are all it takes to run a successful fulfillment department.
While same-day shipping is appealing for customers, it will mean nothing if they receive a poor quality order. In the race to stay ahead of the competition, many online retailers overlook one critical element – quality control.
To achieve proper quality control, implement one of the most basic quality control practices by standardizing your procedures. Standard operating procedures (SOPs), are clearly documented guidelines on how to process and package orders for fulfillment.
To End
Follow these five tips to not just move products, but deliver on your brand promise, one order after the other.