E-commerce businesses have a unique opportunity to make vast amounts of profit nowadays, considering the number of shoppers who choose to buy goods online. The opportunity is there, for sure – but as an e-commerce retailer, are you handling your orders in the right way? Fulfilling orders is easier said than done, especially if you are shipping globally. The proper pick and pack strategy should be in place, but there are some big challenges in making sure that order fulfillment is done right. Here’s a look at the real challenges of picking and packing – and how an outsourced service can help you.

Your pick and pack responsibilities

For a small e-commerce business, picking and packing orders from customers isn’t so difficult. Individual orders are simply picked by your staff, packed, and then sent off to the customer. But once your business becomes larger and you have more orders to fulfill, a simple picking and packing process may not be enough. This is also true if you have a huge influx of orders during peak seasons such as Christmas. Your staff will have a difficult time fulfilling the orders, particularly if there is no set system in place and they are not properly trained for it.

Your main challenges

In order to fulfill all your orders, you need to be highly coordinated, organised, and meticulous. A major challenge for many e-commerce businesses is the streamlining of the order fulfillment process so you can fulfill as many orders as possible in the shortest span of time. If you cannot fulfill an order on time, the consequences can be disastrous, leading to a decrease in customer confidence or worse, customers who decide to take their business elsewhere. Another challenge is the cost. You have to factor in a lot of costs, particularly in shipping, and you may have to pass on these extra expenses to your customers, who certainly wouldn’t appreciate it.

How a pick and pack service can help you

There are pick and pack services which can give you the break you need – and more, give you a process which is highly streamlined and organised. If you are keen on expanding your e-commerce business, a pick and pack service such as the service from www.cannonpacking.co.uk can help you cope with increased orders. The pick and pack service will have a team of skilled workers who will make sure all goods are picked, packaged, and labelled, and then shipped to your customers wherever they are. Pick and pack services also provide you with a cost-effective means of handling big orders, since items are no longer stored in different facilities – they can be stored in a single warehouse, reducing transport costs, and the overall streamlined process is inherently more efficient, resulting in reduced costs as well.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].