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In this blog post, we will discover how small businesses in 2025 can win big in terms of revenue and deliver a superb experience with an order fulfillment strategy.
It is recommended to have robust order fulfillment solutions for small businesses, which is vital for them to thrive and increase profits.
Without having a proper strategy in place, achieving success in order fulfillment isn’t a straightforward task.
Imagine that you shopped online and placed an order to buy a new electronic gadget, and its arrival got delayed due to some reason, or worse, it’s broken.
So, the question here is whether “Are you going to shop with the same online store again?”
The answer is most probably NO.
That’s my point. As a business, you don’t want your customers to have such an experience. Therefore, order fulfillment in eCommerce is crucial to ensure the growth of your business.
So, let’s dive right in.
What are Order Fulfillment for Small Business?
Order fulfillment is a 360-degree process followed by businesses in which they manage orders from placement by customers to delivery. This process involves the activity of order processing, confirmation, pick-up, packing, and shipping to the customer.
The primary objective of having order fulfillment solutions for small businesses is to deliver orders within a predictable timeframe. It primarily includes the use of the supply chain to reduce costs and errors in delivering orders to the customer in proper condition.
Let’s take an example to understand it more.
A large pharma company is taking online orders for medicines from its online storefront. However, their online business is not going well due to bad reviews left by almost all the customers.
Considering the downfall of their business, their finance team chose to get the order fulfillment solution provided by inoday. This smart move enables them to fulfill orders by using the supply chain.
This results in an increase in profits and the number of sales owing to positive reviews by previous customers.
Why Order Fulfillment is Important for Small Businesses?
Without sales, there is no revenue for the B2C/B2B eCommerce business and without revenue, there is no business. That’s why it is important to have an adequate Order fulfillment system in place.
As it is the backbone of an eCommerce business, this will ensure that the ordered product gets into the hands of the customer who ordered it. The following benefits showcase the importance of order fulfillment solutions for small businesses.
- Repeat Business: Trust is the most important factor and is also a key to business growth. Getting new customers may result in more cost than managing the existing ones. Moreover, it provides trust in business reliability to stand out from the competitors.
- Word of Mouth Publicity: This is the purest form of publicity in which a customer gets an exceptional experience. Moreover, it shares that with others. This benefit results in an increase in the number of new customers without paying a single penny for it.
- Reduce Costs: Minimize costly errors like incorrect shipments, product damage, etc., that could ruin the finances of small businesses. It also works to significantly reduce labour hours per order and decrease return shipping costs also.
- Improve Cashflow: It accelerates the cash conversion cycle by diminishing the time between receiving an order and shipping it to the customers. When orders are processed quickly and accurately, businesses can invoice sooner and reduce payment delays.
These order fulfillment solutions for small businesses provide them with the capability to survive in this competitive age. Also, it helps a business stand out from the competition with new-age eCommerce services.
Order Fulfillment Process for Small Business
The order fulfillment process is different for different businesses and varies greatly depending on the region where the business is located and delivered to. However, there are 3 standard options in the process.
Receiving Inventory from the Supplier
The process of order fulfillment starts when the supplier supplies inventory to the eCommerce business. The inventory or stock is usually stored in the fulfillment center. Here, the item should be properly inspected before being stored based on the order fulfillment as shown in the case study of the Warehouse management system.
Order Placement and Item Pickup
Once the order is placed by the customer on the online store, the order processing system informs the fulfillment team about it. This team allocates someone to get the ordered item from the stock. Then that person collects the order along with a slip regarding quantity, location, item number, etc.
Thoughtful Packaging and Shipment
Once all the items of the order are picked, it’s time to pack them all in a box. However, it is recommended that the packaging should be good enough to handle pressure and should also be lightweight (as much as possible). After this, the order will go to the transportation channel as a shipment and be delivered to the customer.
For security, it is always a healthy practice to have a dedicated return policy. However, a business should expect that nothing like this happens, especially a small business. There should also be a specific return window for the customers after which returns will not be allowed in ordinary scenarios.
Conclusion
Multiple small businesses are afraid that the situation might cost them dearly to have an order fulfillment system. However, this system saves more money than it spends on a weak order fulfillment process.
Here, they can get assistance from inoday to get cost-effective order fulfillment in eCommerce solution, which is easy to integrate with the order fulfillment software. This service can be used by small businesses to survive in this digital age.
