NASRC

There are three magic words that can change the fate of any mail order business: pick pack, and ship. The faster and more accurately a business can accomplish these things, the more satisfied their customers will be, and the more successful it will be. However, as your business and the demand for your products grows it can become harder and harder to continue to improve the efficiency of your shipping. This gives you a choice. You can either hire new personnel to pick & pack for you, or you can place increasing pressure on your existing employees to handle the growing workload. Neither of these would be ideal.

Thankfully, there is a better way. By using a fulfillment warehouse, you do more than just get rid of unnecessary building and labor expenses. You contract a team of professionals who understand shipping and handling inside and out. Why waste valuable time having someone multitask when you could have people specifically trained to efficiently and accurately pick pack and ship your goods whenever you need them? A fulfillment warehouse will give you the best of both worlds. By using a fulfillment warehouse you make sure that your stock is handled by a team of experts while eliminating your warehousing costs at the same time.

Fulfillment warehouses specialise in streamlining the entire shipping process. This adds up to savings for them, which in turn adds up to savings for you. Not only do they prevent down time for employees by serving several companies’ shipping requirements, they normally also train their employees to specialize in specific tasks in the shipping process. Much as Henry Ford’s automated assembly line streamlined the process of making automobiles and brought down the manufacturing costs enough that average families could afford to buy cars, the fulfillment warehouse, by assigning workers to specific tasks like pick &pack, makes the entire process more efficient, saving costs for everyone.

Staff in a fulfillment warehouse basically perform two roles; pick & pack. Pickers are specially trained to examine your order manifests, find the specified items, and prepare them for shipping. He or she then hands the items over to another specialized member of staff, who continues the shipping process from there. He Will then set about fulfilling the subsequent order.

Packers check that all of the items on the list have been correctly picked, giving you a second pair of eyes to make sure that nothing has been missed out (and potentially saving you and your customers some aggravation). Once he or she has verified that all the items are present, the packer carries out the packaging process, including attaching a packaging slip in most cases. Finally, the packer will label the packages with the customer’s address and any specific instructions related to how the package is to be shipped. Professional packers know when packages need to be labeled ‘fragile’ or ‘handle with care’, and taking those concerns out of your hands.

Fulfillment centers then ship the item to its final destination. Generally speaking, the shipment will be via major courier services, like UPS and FedEx.  Another benefit of using a fulfillment warehouse is that they ship in much larger bulk than you do, providing for lower shipping rates, which are passed along to you.

Always remember the three magic words of mail order; pick pack and ship, and remember that a fulfillment warehouse can do all three for you.

Jeff Ehrlich is the President of FulfillmentPlusNY which offers fulfillment services for a whole host of customers nationwide.Contact Jeff for order processing services.