For your customer experience, you don’t want to worry about the shipping time, cost, and security of your international orders. While the international market introduces a new audience for your business, finding a company to fulfill your orders can be challenging.
This article discusses selecting a fulfillment company for your business and customer satisfaction, the best fulfillment services to embrace and the international shipping process. Let’s dive into the details.
Table of Contents
What Is Global Fulfillment?
Global fulfillment is the efficient ordering, processing and delivering orders internationally for e-commerce businesses.
Placing an order within your country can be as easy as visiting your favorite e-commerce store and ordering an item. You are sure it will be on your doorstep within the estimated timeframe.
But suppose you are a business owner with your inventory in different countries. In that case, you need an international partner to receive your orders, process them and have the orders shipped to your customers in a simple and easy-to-track process. Hence, you need a global fulfillment partner.
What Does a Global Fulfillment Company Do?
Different fulfillment companies have developed customized solutions to meet the demands of their customers, a fulfillment company should manage the whole supply chain process from the order placing to delivery.
Here are the key roles of a global fulfillment company
- Customer order processing- It is the responsibility of a global fulfillment company to track and store information regarding customer orders, including date, received, quantity, type and cost of the entire order fulfillment.
- Sorting and storage– Items you are ordering are stored in a warehouse before they are picked and packaged.
But whose responsibility is it to ensure that items are grouped according to their characteristics and assigned a storage location? The global fulfillment company is responsible.
- Inventory management– You want to know where your inventory is and how much longer you should wait before receiving it; hence a global fulfillment company should provide tracking services.
- Picking, packing and shipping- It is the global fulfillment company’s role to receive your order, package it according to requirements and ensure it is delivered to your destination.
Generally, warehousing, packing and shipping are the key responsibilities of a global fulfillment company.
How To Choose a Global Fulfillment Company
You want a global fulfillment company that will offer the best experience and takes away the headache of inconveniences, high expenses and insecurity. These tips will help you identify the right global fulfillment partner for your business:
Shipping speeds.
You don’t want to lose customers due to delayed delivery. Imagine ordering an on-demand item, say a smartphone, and it takes five days before it is delivered when you were assured of a two-day delivery. What will prevent you from considering a different store?
Amazon’s two-day delivery policy has become the industry shipping standard. It’s prudent that you measure up to standard with the fulfillment company that you choose because-commercedon’t, your competitors will, you will lose customers.
Location of fulfillment warehouses
Fulfillment companies with multiple warehouses at strategic locations are ideal for your customers. Otherwise, you will suffer from increased logistics costs and delayed delivery of orders. Remember, the farther the warehouse is from the customer, the longer it takes for the item.
Hence, before committing to a fulfillment partner, ensure that you know the warehousing locations concerning your customer base.
Fulfillment costs
Different fulfillment companies charge different rates, from shipping to warehousing. However, you are looking for a fulfillment center to optimize your budget while meeting your fulfillment needs.
Think of a company like NextSmartShip Global warehousing. You have a guaranteed zero set up and inventory receiving fee and zero storage fee for the first 30 days after your registration.
With NextSmartShip, you only pay as you sell, hence saving on inventory expenses. You want the best ROI, which is NextSmartShip’s priority for your business.
Software automation and Integration
Any global fulfillment company can offer fulfillment services but your experience as a customer matter. Imagine a company that offers a solution for order entry, tracking, shipping rates and inventory status for integration with your system. Must be a nice experience.
Besides, seamless integrations with major shopping carts make the order fulfillment process simple and efficient. Also, integrating inventory management with warehouse management provides all-around tracking of your fulfillment process.
Transparency and visibility
You want to track where your parcel is and the estimated time until it is delivered. Also, automation, such as inventory level tracking and order processing, improve the fulfillment process and promote timely delivery.
Customers appreciate timely delivery, and their confidence and trust in your service will help grow your business.
Imagine losing a customer because you have run out of stock or the number of items ordered is insufficient. Automations and software are critical to promoting transparency and hence customer trust.
Branding and packaging
While not all fulfillment centers offer branding and packaging options, a personalized branding experience encourages your customers to buy from you. Even for the companies that offer the branding option, it is important to consider the branding charges before the partnership.
The goal of branding is to encourage returning customers. That touch and feel of belonging are significant as customers grow their loyalty to your business, promoting growth. A fulfillment center that offers cost-effective branding services is a good fit for your business.
Scalability
You are looking forward to scaling your business, and you don’t want a fulfillment company that cannot accommodate your scaling demands. Software integration and storage space are one of the benefits offered by cloud-based solutions to allow scalability.
I suggest you scrutinize the software used by the fulfillment company you want to partner with to ensure you are unlimited and understand the scaling expectations and requirements in terms of cost.
What Is The Global Fulfillment Process?
From when a customer places an order to the delivery time, the fulfillment process may seem as straightforward as order receipt, packaging and shipping. However, it’s a detailed process worth looking at.
- Receiving an order– In-house order requires internal fulfillment processing. However, a logistics company must notify its warehouse of incoming orders through the order processing system.
- Storage and inventory management- The fulfillment company may have its warehouse or a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for storing customer items before they are picked and packed.
Inventory management helps track stock levels to ensure a controlled inventory and customer convenience.
- Picking and packing– Picking and packing orders may suffer human error when accounting for order quantity and quality, but most 3PLs have barcoded systems to help with that. Once the items are packaged as required, they are ready for shipping.
- Shipping– Packaged items are identified with shipping labels for the delivery company to ship to the desired destination. A reliable delivery company is essential to ensure that items arrive in good condition.
- Returns and customer service– Returning items for exchange or due to unmet expectations is inevitable. However, the emphasis is on an easy-to-follow return policy. Your customers will feel respected if the process is easy and transparent.
Although the order fulfillment process may seem easy to the customer, the fulfillment center has much to take care of before your order is delivered.
Ship Anywhere With NextSmartShip
If you are looking forward to making your e-commerce business the next big thing, then NextSmartShip has got you covered. With over one million packages annually delivered internationally, the company listens and provides a specific solution for your needs.
Here is what makes NextSmartShip your ideal solution for global fulfillment needs:
Multiple fulfillment centers– Are you in Europe, the USA, China or Australia? NextSmartShip has strategically located warehouses for your convenience to ensure a 2-day delivery with 99.99% delivery accuracy.
International courier services– With over 70 top courier partners, NextSmartShip ensures safe and fast global shipping. In addition, NextSmartShip’s smart routing provides suggestions for the fastest route to your customer’s destination.
Smart tracking– Regardless of your location globally, NextSmartShip’s one-stop-shop solution keeps you updated with your order status and details until delivery. Here is a sneak peek of what you enjoy with NextSmartShip’s SaaS solution:
- Inventory monitoring and management– You will never miss a sale because you are understocked or overstocked. NextSmartShip ensures the right stock levels every season through monitoring and automated alerts.
- Automatic syncing- If orders come from multiple platforms, you can view all orders on a single dashboard with real-time updates to ensure timely order processing and delivery.
- Real-time fulfillment tracking- You don’t have to worry about how long you should wait until your item is delivered. With NextSmartShips’s SaaS solution, you can track your item in real-time and the estimated time to receive it.
- View shipping rates– You can log in to the system and view shipping rates for transparency of your billing, promoting trust and confidence.
- Send shipping updates and tracking numbers to your customers– Your customers no longer have to keep calling and enquiring about the status of their items. All you need is to share the tracking numbers for the real-time status of the item.
- Manage and track returns- If your customers would like to return an item, the easy-to-follow policy will help them to achieve that, and you can track the returned items from the system. Tracking returns helps you to track your overall cost and ROI.
You can sign up and start shipping globally with the world’s smart solution for all your global fulfillment needs.
