The Evolution of All-in-one Fulfilment Services

When setting up eCommerce, online retail or any selling business over the internet, fulfilment is something you will need to include in your business plan. Marketing your new business, product and making sales to cover any costs and start making a profit will probably be at the forefront of your mind. However, focusing on fulfilment is important and you have three main options:

1. Fulfil your own orders
2. Sell products through a drop shipper who fulfils orders
3. Use a logistics company to handle warehouse and delivery fulfilment

The fulfilment sector has undergone a few changes and there are many tailored options now available to businesses. All-in-one fulfilment services are one area that has grown recently and can be a good choice for many businesses.

Before Outsourced All-in-one Fulfilment Options

In the days before outsourced or all-in-one fulfilment, businesses selling all sorts of products would have to work with a large number of additional companies to despatch products and goods to their customers. Once a sale was made the chain would begin, with a printing company used to design the box, a packaging company to wrap it up, a courier to collect and take it to the distribution centre and then a delivery business to complete the journey.

With all-in-one fulfilment services, these steps can be combined. For example, with the Whistl fulfilment services, everything from picking and packing orders in the warehouse and inventory management up to their delivery can be done in one place. Before outsourced dedicated fulfilment companies, there would have been many more businesses involved, throughout the order fulfilment process.

Reasons for All-in-one Fulfilment Services

Demand for retail cross-channel fulfilment has driven all-in-one fulfilment services, alongside growing consumer expectations and the costs associated with logistics and transportation. At the heart of this is the growth of eCommerce, which is changing how the retail and logistics industries operate, adapting to new requirements and opportunities.

Many warehouses and distribution centres are now all-in-one fulfilment centres. Here action such as orders being picked, packaged and sent out for delivery all take place under one roof. This aims to keep costs down and is great for large businesses that can afford such space and staff, but for start-ups and smaller companies, they often prefer to outsource to all-in-one fulfilment companies instead.  

Benefits of Outsourcing Fulfilment

There are many benefits of outsourcing and using all-in-one fulfilment services. Some of the main reasons for doing so include:

• Lower your costs: Hiring a team to take charge of your order fulfilments can be costly, as can paying numerous companies to look after each part of the process. All-in-one can make it more cost-effective and clearer when budgeting each month. 
• Simplify the process: When there are many others involved in the fulfilment process it can get complicated, leading to late and missed orders. Using just one company makes it a lot simpler and keeps accountability in one place.
• Free up time: Your staff and business will have more time to focus on other aspects of the business, such as developing new products and sales, rather than spending hours on fulfilment and missing out on such opportunities.  

Tailored Fufilment Services from Whistl 

At Whistl we can build a bespoke solution that meets all the needs of your business, providing a smooth and reliable process from customers placing their orders to the final delivery stage. Everything from systems, warehousing, inventory management to logistics, customer order despatch, returns, and even customer support can be taken care of.