Order fulfilment defined

Before we get into the key challenges of order fulfilment, let’s first define the term. Order fulfilment encompasses everything from receiving and storing stock, and once a customer places an order, picking and packing their parcel and delivering it to their door. It may be obvious, but it is worth stating; accuracy and speed is paramount during this process to ensure orders are fulfilled on time and to the customer’s specifications.

Given that customers have the power to seek products from so many other online retailers with just a few clicks, there may be no other imperative more critical than ensuring your fulfilment process is as efficient and error-free as possible.

The 6 steps of order fulfilment

• Let’s break down each of the steps involved in the order fulfilment process:
• Receiving stock at the warehouse or fulfilment centre, which must be counted and inspected.
• Storing stock so it is available for warehouse staff to begin picking and packing.
• The picking of order items from the warehouse according to a packing list that contains SKUs, product sizes, quantity of items and the location of items in the warehouse.
• Packing items into a parcel and preparing it for dispatch.
• Shipping the package to the customer via a courier or multi carrier.
• If the package is returned, inspecting the package to determine if restock or scrapping is necessary and ensuring updates are communicated to the customer.

How to solve the 7 common pain points of order fulfilment

Australian and New Zealand ecommerce businesses are increasingly turning to cloud-based order management systems (OMS) to tackle the challenges of order fulfilment.

These solutions can automate processes and uncover new efficiencies, helping businesses do everything from selecting the right delivery partners and gain complete visibility of orders, to overseeing multiple warehouses and ensuring optimal pick accuracy.

Let’s look at the seven most common order fulfilment challenges and how an order management system can help solve them.

1. Time-consuming stock control processes

For many online retailers and 3PLs, their stock control systems rely on countless manual processes that sap the time and effort of warehouse staff. This includes using spreadsheets to track orders, deliveries, purchases and stock levels – a system that becomes increasingly error-prone and inadequate as you take on more customers and orders.

An order management system can eliminate manual data entry and other tasks required to ensure stock control. They allow you to set rules for when and how to order new stock, which automates the process, while at the same time instantly updating inventory data so you and your team have a complete, real-time view of what stock is on hand.

An OMS can also enable you to leverage innovative technology like barcode scanning to quickly and easily keep track of inventory and orders. One of the biggest benefits of a mobile barcode inventory system is that it eliminates the need to manually key in items into a spreadsheet or software system.

Armed with a mobile scanner, warehouse staff can scan items when received at the warehouse, and the data is instantly updated in your order management system. This barcode system can also provide visibility of displaced stock. By simply scanning an item’s barcode, the OMS can show you all known locations of that item in the warehouse, allowing staff to easily find displaced items.

2. Inability to streamline batch picking

Batch picking, otherwise known as cluster picking, batching or multi-order picking, is a strategy that involves warehouse staff picking multiple similar orders at the same time. It accelerates the picking process as staff do not need to make multiple trips back and forth to the same picking location.

Businesses that need to fulfil a large volume of orders benefit the most from batch picking, and an order management system helps streamline the process. Via batch scheduling functionality, the system can automatically group together orders containing the same items. It can then create batch pick slips for staff to collect items and process multiple orders at the same time.

3. Inaccurate and inefficient picking

As mentioned previously, combining the use of mobile barcode scanners with an OMS allows warehouse staff to scan items, which are then updated into the system in real-time. This removes the need for any manual data entry and ensures that stock checks and inventory putaway are performed with 100 per cent accuracy.

Similarly, barcode scanning can also help enhance the speed and accuracy of the picking process. When it is combined with an OMS, staff can even receive voice-assisted picking commands and view product images to ensure they pick the right items.

An order management system also makes it easy for staff to see what stock is available and where to locate it. By using barcode scanners for stock checks, inventory putaway and when moving stock, you can ensure all inventory data is available in the system so you and your staff can track the movement of stock through the warehouse.

4. Selecting the best shipping partners

Ecommerce businesses traditionally relied on a single courier to ship orders to customers. But many have since transitioned to a multi-carrier strategy that offers more flexibility and cost-savings, in addition to faster delivery times.

While this strategy provides you with the ability to compare the transit times, rates and delivery routes offered by different couriers, choosing the most cost and time-efficient option is often a challenge.

An order management system that boasts in-built integrations with leading courier management software makes this process quick and simple. Such systems can automatically analyse the myriad couriers available and choose the best one via smart shipping rules.

This streamlined process is thanks to the ability to set smart rules, which allow the system to choose couriers based on your pre-defined criteria. This can include the weight and destination of your order, or if order items are fragile or potentially hazardous.

Once your courier is chosen by the system, you can then track the progress of the delivery in real-time and receive automated shipping updates. You can easily locate orders in the system simply by searching the customer’s name, order number or post code.

An order management system can even choose the ideal courier if you are shipping to an overseas location simply by checking the customer’s postcode. Courier integrations also help you save time and hassle by removing the need to log in to multiple platforms, as all your courier relationships and deliveries can be managed in one place.

5. Managing multiple warehouses

If your business has several warehouses, each with their own separate warehouse management systems, the pain of logging in to multiple platforms yet again rears its ugly head.

This is where the integration offered by a cloud-based order management system saves you time and effort. It can integrate your disparate warehouse management systems so you can easily manage inventory and transfers between warehouses in one place.

All the data you need to manage your warehouses, in addition to full visibility of all your sales channels and courier relationships, is available from anywhere, at any time, in the cloud. In terms of managing multiple warehouses, an OMS enables you to:

• View and manage inventory across multiple stock locations and multiple warehouse locations.
• Automatically route orders to particular warehouses based on your stock levels or the delivery address.
• Enhance the efficiency of pickers by splitting and dividing picking tasks via location zone management.
• Customise location types to suit your setup such as Pick Bins, Standard Pallets and Double Size Pallets, and set rules for storage billing and automatic stock allocation.
• Ensure efficient stock putaway across multiple warehouses by creating an Advanced Shipping Notification (ASN) that allows you to track expected deliveries.
• Optimise your warehouse space using automated location management and advanced workflows including pallet support, stock counts and cycling.

6. Monitoring orders across multiple channels

Without software to simplify things, managing and tracking orders across multiple sales channels can quickly sap your time.

Leading order management systems offer in-built multichannel listing software with leading online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, as well as shopping carts like Shopify and Magento.

They also feature open API functionality that allows you to connect other sales channels like your website.

With all your sales channels integrated in one solution, you no longer need to log into multiple platforms to manually track orders. You gain complete visibility and control of all your orders in one place, allowing you to track their progress from the moment they are dispatched from the warehouse to their arrival on the customer’s doorstep.

The best systems also provide automated alerts that let you know when a new order has been placed, while at the same time instantly sending the order details to warehouse staff for fulfilment. Plus, automated alerts are not only for your benefit – the system can also send them to the customer to keep them abreast of progress.

As orders are fulfilled, the OMS will automatically update your stock levels across all your ecommerce channels. This eliminates the need to perform any manual data entry and helps ensure you always have the right amount of stock on hand to meet customer demands.

7. Ensuring ideal inventory levels

Ensuring you have the right amount of stock on hand, at the right time, to prevent stockouts and fulfil every customer order is a key challenge for many businesses.

An order management system is a critical tool for ensuring ideal stock levels as it offers powerful automation to streamline inventory management and gives you complete, real-time visibility of stock as it moves through your warehouse.

Let’s look at some of the ways an OMS can streamline inventory management and ensure greater stock control:

• The system automatically monitors inventory levels and sales data so they are always in sync.
• Stock prioritisation capabilities enable you to reserve and allocate stock to specific orders or priority customers.
• You can set rules so orders are picked based on pre-defined criteria like date, size, value or carton size.
• The system can automatically order stock from a supplier when a customer places an order.
• Inventory forecasting functionality helps you know the quantity of product you need to purchase from a supplier, helping you keep your stock at the ideal level.

Improving order fulfilment challenges: How to track success

Hopefully you now have a good understanding of how an order management system can help you solve the common challenges of order fulfilment. But once you implement the system and begin optimising your processes, what does success look like?

To understand the ROI your investment is delivering, it is critical to set and track key metrics to measure success by. The specific metrics you will need to track will depend on your unique priorities, but many ecommerce businesses typically measure success with metrics that cover customer, operations and warehouse.

Some of the most critical order fulfilment metrics to consider include:

• Quantity of orders
• Order fulfilment times
• Stock holding and availability
• Inventory count accuracy by location
• Fulfilment accuracy rate
• Order picking accuracy
• Orders picked per hour
• Client revenue
• On-time shipping percentage
• Rate of return
• Popular stock lines

Choosing the right metrics from this list may ultimately be influenced by those in your business. Your sales managers may want to focus more on productivity metrics to help win new customers and deliver quotes for new opportunities, while your business’s leadership may be more inclined to have visibility of individual customer or product lines.

An order management system like Access Mintsoft can help you monitor order fulfilment improvements. With just a few clicks, you can set up intuitive dashboards that provide a comprehensive view of all your key metrics, as shown below.

Simplify order fulfilment with Access Mintsoft

Access Mintsoft is a powerful cloud-based order management system specifically designed to solve the challenges of online retailers and 3PLs.

Trusted by over 600 businesses worldwide, it can help you eliminate the burden of manual tasks, gain real-time visibility of fulfillment processes, and simplify inventory management.

Access Mintsoft offers seamless integration with leading shopping carts, marketplaces, and couriers, allowing you to manage all your key fulfilment processes in one place, and it comes with expert implementation support for a hassle-free experience.

Top 4 ways Mintsoft can help automate your order and warehouse processes