TABLE OF CONTENTS Controlling the entire customer buying experience, from beginning to end, gives an e-commerce business a competitive advantage. However, this also means that you must learn how to make a profit on each shipped package. Yet, the sad fact is that most e-commerce operators cannot quote their business s cost of fulfillment.
Demand for order fulfillment solutions is reshaping the existing e-commerce landscape. While most web-based businesses initially survived by offering a limited number of products, to compete most have been forced to expand their product range.
Any e-commerce business with more than 1000 orders per day should bring its e-commerce fulfillment in-house for three reasons:
It gives more control of the operations.
It leverages economies between existing and online channels.
It allows differentiation of customer service.
The author understands that the small- to mid-sized e-commerce business can t afford the infrastructure that the enterprise web-based business puts in place, and for these smaller entities it s not absolutely essential. That s because they don t have a large inventory to deal with daily. Remember your logistics plan? Use it to give you a good idea of what you need to do.
Order processing can be tamed if the volume is within a manageable range. As orders come in, send email acknowledgements to the customers. Then, process the orders through the payment authorization process, generate invoices, and log all information into the accounting software and inventory software. With such a system a website can know how much inventory has...
