How technology is shaping the 3PLs of tomorrow

These ‘tech-enabled’ 3PLs are using the power of automation to transform the way they do business. By embracing innovative, cloud-based order fulfilment software, they are dramatically reducing the time and costs involved in providing fulfilment services to ecommerce partners.

These software solutions empower 3PLs to automate the most labour-intensive, error-prone elements of the order fulfillment process. They help eliminate the manual work required with a range of services – from inventory management to picking, packing, shipping and tracking orders.

Warehouse management software also provides 3PLs with 360-degree visibility of the order lifecycle, delivering the data-driven insights they need to continually enhance the supply chain. 

Top 4 benefits of adopting order fulfilment software

Thanks to order fulfilment software, tech-enabled 3PLs are delivering better, faster, more cost-efficient service to ecommerce partners, helping them meet the ever-increasing demands of today’s online customers.

Here are four key benefits that your 3PL can deliver to ecommerce clients with the help of order fulfilment software:

1. Eliminate manual work via automation

One of the biggest time-saving features of order fulfilment software are real-time alerts.

Traditionally, 3PLs needed to manually send orders to their client’s warehouse personnel prior to the shipping deadline each day. But with the help of order fulfilment software that is fully integrated with the ecommerce store, there is simply no need to do so.

Warehouse personnel receive a real-time alert as soon as an order is placed, removing the need for any human intervention at all. The software also provides the ecommerce partner with real-time visibility of the subsequent fulfilment process, with each step immediately documented and updated.

This is just one part of the fulfillment process that order fulfilment software can help streamline. For 3PLs, its time-saving capabilities can extend to myriad other areas of their business. For instance, software can help automatically reorder inventory when stock dips below a certain level, cutting out the man hours required and preventing stockouts.

2. Slash fulfilment expenses with data-driven insights

It is likely that your 3PL business is already collecting significant amounts of data. And in that data, there is the potential to slash many of the costs involved in the fulfilment process.

Order fulfilment software provides the powerful data-analytics capabilities needed to make sense of all your data and glean insights that can help your business – and your clients’ businesses – operate more cost-efficiently.

If we take the example of shipping, the costs typically involved can easily be reduced by leveraging data-driven insights. Warehouse management software can make sense of customer data to determine which client warehouses are closest to customers. With this insight, 3PLs can strategically split inventory across multiple fulfilment centres so that orders are sent from those warehouses closest to customers, thereby slashing shipping costs.    

Such data analytics capabilities can similarly deliver efficiencies for other areas of an ecommerce client’s supply chain. Metrics related to peak fulfilment times, sales by channel, revenue of orders shipped by day, as well as sales and quantity of orders by region can all be used to make strategic, cost-cutting improvements. 

3. Minimise errors and enhance visibility for clients

Warehouse management software can help eliminate the human error that often plagues the fulfilment process.

By automating the process, software removes the need for retailers to manually send orders to their 3PL partner. This means that typos and incorrect information are no longer a problem, and as such, neither are the costly product returns, exchanges and replacements that can sap customer satisfaction.

Software also provides retailers with visibility of the 3PLs accuracy and performance in handling their orders, across all phases of the fulfillment process.

4. Enhance customer satisfaction 

The visibility that order fulfilment software provides retailers is of course not limited to keeping tabs on 3PL performance. It can also give them the insights needed to significantly improve their customer service.

Software provides retailers with visibility of the entire fulfilment process, delivering real-time information at every stage of an order – from the moment it is shipped to its delivery at the customer’s home. With this level of visibility, retailers can easily and accurately field customer questions and provide the consistent, informed service customers demand.

The powerful automation an order management system also enables 3PLs to live up to the same-day or two-day delivery expectations that have become standard for leading retailers and customers alike.