Outsourcing order fulfillment has become a popular option for businesses looking to streamline their operations, reduce costs, and focus on core competencies. However, many businesses still have misconceptions about outsourcing, such as the belief that it only means sending tasks … Read More
Warehouse
To Cross-Dock or Not to Cross-Dock?
Here’s a question for operations-minded people: should you cross-dock? Cross-docking refers to moving a product from a manufacturer to a fulfillment warehouse, which then turns and delivers it directly to the customer with little or no material handling in between. … Read More
Top Tips for Better Picking and Packing
Pick and pack is one of the keys to successful order fulfillment. If you can get your products off the shelves and ready to ship with zero error, that’s half the fulfillment battle already won. Today’s ecommerce landscape requires pick-and-pack … Read More
4 Reasons Why a Single-Source Partner Makes More Sense
You’ve decided that outsourcing your order fulfillment is the wisest thing to do as you grow your business. What next? Do you start handing out contracts to the lowest bidder for each facet of your operations? The ecommerce industry is … Read More
5 Tips for an Awesome Ecommerce Holiday Season in the Warehouse
With about two months left before we’re in the thick of the holidays, you can still get procedures in place to prepare for your holiday peak. Here, we’ll talk about five tips for readying your warehouse operations for the most … Read More
How To: Make Fulfillment a Marketing Asset
The fulfillment process involves nearly every part of your ecommerce business. But if you’re not using the warehouse as a hotbed for post-purchase marketing, you’re missing out on opportunities to build brand loyalty and extend the customer experience! How? Every … Read More
More Myths About Online Retail to Avoid
If you’re looking to avoid ruining customer relationships, losing sales to competitors, and making your operations team miserable, let’s dive into some myth-busting about online retail. “A good website is all you need to have a successful ecommerce business.” Having … Read More
5 Ways to Upsell More Product This Holiday Season
What’s better than a holiday sales season? A record-setting holiday sales season with more sales and less effort! You’ll already be processing tons of orders this peak season, so we’ve come up with a few ways for you to up … Read More
Solving the Problem of Slow-Moving Inventory
Anyone running a retail operation is all too familiar with the acronym SKU or stock keeping unit. You’re probably also familiar with SMI or slow-moving inventory if you’re managing your inventory. Slow-moving inventory is merchandise sitting in your warehouse and … Read More
4 Cyber Monday Disasters – and How to Avoid Them
Monday, November 28, 2022, is three short months away. Are you ready for one of the biggest online shopping days of the year? With all that pressure, there are bound to be a few mishaps. Here, we’ll tackle four common … Read More
How Fulfillment Makes the Sale: Product Returns
This blog is part four of a four-part series about how order fulfillment impacts customer satisfaction. To download the complete guide “4 Ways Fulfillment Can Make (or Break) Your Next Sale”, click here. If there is one thing that strikes … Read More
5 Ways to Fail at Fulfillment
Fulfillment is one of the most critical parts of the ecommerce order lifecycle. As peak seasons get busier, the competition gets heavier, and margins get smaller, the demand for outsourced order fulfillment grows. There are plenty of outsourced fulfillment partners … Read More
Ask These 10 Inventory Management Questions
Are you ready to outsource your order fulfillment? We’ve gathered 10 inventory management questions that should be on your list to ask your fulfillment partner. Outsourcing your ecommerce order fulfillment can save precious time, money, and headaches. It’s an excellent … Read More
Are you keeping up with fulfillment?
You’ve invested in marketing – SEO, paid search, email marketing, social – and it’s paying off. Orders to your online store are on the rise, and you’re forecasting that trend to continue. But is fulfillment keeping up with online sales? … Read More
Have you outgrown your fulfillment provider? Here’s how to find out.
Choosing the right order fulfillment vendor is hard. Your fulfillment provider is the very link between your products and your customers. Maintaining that relationship is important, but things change as you and your business evolve. It would help to analyze … Read More
3 Tips for Faster Ecommerce Returns
Whether it’s the holiday season or your slowest season, some customers will send their orders back for many reasons. The product could be the wrong size/color, damaged, or not wanted or needed. Whatever the issue is, when you receive a … Read More
Tips for Running a Safer Warehouse
We’ve spoken before about how fulfillment is a crucial and time-consuming aspect of ecommerce. It’s a massive problem if you cannot fulfill your orders efficiently and accurately. But nothing goes hand-in-hand with maximum warehouse productivity like a safe facility and … Read More
5 (More) Common Myths about Outsourced Fulfillment
We’re revisiting our last post with five more crazy things we’ve heard about outsourced order fulfillment to talk about. Read on to learn more. 1. Order fulfillment doesn’t matter as long as my website looks good. Ecommerce is highly visual, … Read More
4 Ways to Go Green in the Warehouse
We all want to do our part to reduce our impact on the environment. Well, just because ecommerce operates online doesn’t mean that we’re guilty of being unkind to Mother Nature. Here are a few ways to make your fulfillment … Read More
6 Things You Could be Doing if You Outsourced Your Fulfillment
We love running warehouses, managing contact centers, and shipping orders. Fortunately for us, not everyone in direct-to-consumer retail loves it as much as we do. Based on our conversations with our ecommerce clients and a few observations after 40 years … Read More
8 Real-Life Frustrations of In-House Order Fulfillment
While the thought of outsourced fulfillment can make a retailer nervous, in-house operations can bring a whole new level of frustration that you may not think is possible. Here, we examine the top 8 biggest “uggh” moments that direct-to-consumer retailers … Read More
What Happens After a Customer Clicks ‘Buy Now’?
Ecommerce provides a super-fast, convenient way for consumers to get what they want. However, a whole lot has to happen in the background to make this entire process the seemingly-easy process that customers believe it to be. The order fulfillment … Read More
Outsourcing Operations Makes the Holiday Season a Success
An expert third-party fulfillment provider can be a great help to ecommerce retailers looking to reduce costs, increase operational efficiencies, and expand their service and delivery offerings (all while focusing more on their business growth). But it becomes instrumental during … Read More
10 Signs You’ve Found a Great Ecommerce Growth Partner
Whether you’re an ecommerce start-up that is just launching your brand or a seasoned online retailer who needs to expand, you’ll need an outsourced fulfillment partner who will encourage your company’s growth. But how do you know you’re making the … Read More
Cycle Counting Helps Make Inventory Management More Fun (Kinda)
Inventory management is a necessary function of ecommerce distribution. Ensuring your inventory count is accurate and up-to-date is essential, but it’s not always easy. One method we use at Speed Commerce is called cycle counting. What is a cycle count, … Read More
Why Better Fulfillment Leads to Lower Returns
Returns are inevitable, especially with online retailers. However, an interesting tidbit: A recent study found that between 15 and 40 percent of all online purchases end up being returned. The overall return rate is 10.6 percent when including brick and … Read More
6 Signs Your Fulfillment Partner Needs to be Replaced
You decided to outsource your order fulfillment. But things haven’t been great. Are you worried that you made a mistake? Or, are you planning to outsource your fulfillment and are unsure how to make the best decision? There are a … Read More
Do You Have Complex Fulfillment?
It’s no secret that Speed Commerce specializes in complex fulfillment – in fact, we’re one of the few in the fulfillment space that offers such a broad range of capabilities. But what seems to be a real secret is the … Read More
5 Common Myths About Outsourced Fulfillment
Outsourced order fulfillment is not for every retailer. But sometimes, the reasons why many retailers think outsourcing is not right for them are buried more in fiction than in fact. We’d like to take a minute to address some of … Read More
How Many People Does it Take to Run a Warehouse?
How many people does it take to run a warehouse? Well, it depends, really. For some, their warehouse is just the place to store inventory. For others, the warehouse makes up an active and complex fulfillment center with automated systems, … Read More
Order Fulfillment & Customer Care: A Match Made in Heaven
Did you know that the most successful ecommerce fulfillment operations go hand-in-hand with customer care? It’s true! When your warehouse staff and contact center agents fully understand each others’ role in the order lifecycle, you can reduce handling times (and … Read More
How to Measure Order Fulfillment Success
Outsourcing inventory and operational responsibilities to a fulfillment partner can be a very scary business decision for retailers. Customer satisfaction must not be put at risk since it is a fundamental driver of retail growth. To keep customers coming back, … Read More
6 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Ecommerce
Ecommerce is hyper-competitive. But even though every retailer knows that, it’s amazing how few companies actually know what their competition is doing on a regular basis. While copying their strategies might not be the best idea, there are still a … Read More
Should I Invest in Outsourced Order Fulfillment?
It’s a question we get asked pretty frequently: should I outsource my order fulfillment? Well, naturally we almost always say yes (because that’s one of the services we provide!) but it isn’t the best option for every retailer. However, if … Read More
What is a 3PL?
A lot of companies call themselves a ‘3PL’ (third party logistics) provider, while others just called themselves a fulfillment company, and still others called themselves both. What’s the difference? No matter what way you slice it, a true direct-to-consumer order … Read More
The Benefits of Awesome Product Packaging
With ecommerce, you don’t have many — if any — opportunities to interact face-to-face with your customers. You need to rely on your website content, customer contact center, and online reputation to do that for you. However, your product packaging … Read More
Keys to Great Outsourced Fulfillment
The top executive at an online retailer shouldn’t be worried about how many pack stations are operating at a time, the daily pick accuracy, or how many purchase orders were placed that day. You can be confident that the company’s … Read More
Outsourced Fulfillment Fail: No Product Personalization
Ecommerce is a dogfight right now. Never has it been more important for online retailers to find some way – any way – to become the top dog in their space. There are a lot of great ways to do … Read More
Warehouse Tour? A Must For Retailers Seeking Outsourced Fulfillment
With the rise of e-commerce and the resulting increase in demand for fast and efficient fulfillment, it’s more important than ever to understand the inner workings of the warehouse that will be managing your inventory. The truth is, taking a … Read More
Top Fulfillment Lessons From the 2016 Peak Season
The 2016 holiday shopping season was one for the record books, with ecommerce growing at 11% year over year. With e-commerce’s tremendous growth, warehousing and fulfillment centers are evaluating how to step up their game to ensure products are put … Read More
Better Peak? Better Communication!
Planning for seasonal spikes in your retail business takes careful planning and coordination. And there’s no time more critical for e-tailers than the months leading up to the online shopping rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When you work with an … Read More
3 Tips for Peak Season Warehouse Prep
Spikes in online retail sales bring unique challenges to your warehouse. And no time of the year is more challenging for e-tailers than the long haul between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whether you’re managing your ecommerce distribution facility or working with … Read More
The Ecommerce Forecast for Holidays 2014
After this weekend, you’ll have to start thinking about fall. And everyone knows that after fall comes winter, and winter comes… the holiday season! But what will customers be searching for? Will sales spike again? Who will come out on … Read More
The Problem(s) with Fulfillment By Amazon
We talk to ecommerce retailers of all shapes and sizes – from multi-million dollar divisions of the world’s best-known brands, to mid-size online niche businesses, to start-up companies shipping packages out of their garages. Despite their differences, many of the … Read More
Why You Should Offer Product Personalization: It Makes You Different
This blog is part five of a five-part series on product personalization. To read the complete resource guide “5 Reasons Why You Should Offer Product Personalization”, please click here. Every retailer wants to be different – although we might want … Read More
Why You Should Offer Product Personalization: Because It Eliminates Returns
This blog is part three of a five-part series on product personalization. To read the complete resource guide “5 Reasons Why You Should Offer Product Personalization”. Yes, you read that title right – product personalization can help eliminate returned orders … Read More
Why You Should Offer Product Personalization: Because It Makes Money
This blog is part two of a five-part series on product personalization. To read the complete resource guide “5 Reasons Why You Should Offer Product Personalization”. So you’re still on the fence about personalization. Sure, that’s understandable, especially when you … Read More
How Fulfillment Makes the Sale: Order Appearance & Accuracy
This blog is part three of a four-part series about how order fulfillment impacts customer satisfaction. To download the complete guide “4 Ways Fulfillment Can Make (or Break) Your Next Sale”, click here. Have you ever been so excited to … Read More