In today’s consumer-driven economic landscape, 63% consumers say that they expect three-day delivery as the standard. Regardless of the size of your dropshipping business, gaps in fulfillment efficiency can slow your business growth and profits. Thus, you have to put considerable attention and effort into ensuring that your global fulfillment and supply chain are running as smooth as possible. Continue reading to discover 8 wonderful tips to increase efficiency in your global fulfillment.
Focus on Inventory Accuracy
If your inventory metrics aren’t accurate, you won’t be able to fulfill orders at a high level of efficiency. Customers expect to see what’s in stock and available in real-time when they’re ordering, and if what they see doesn’t reflect what you have on hand, it could lead to issues. Tips to increase inventory accuracy in global fulfillment include establishing good inventory naming and labelling, practice and performing spot checks and cycle counts.
Make Your Global Fulfillment Process Predictable
When your global fulfillment process varies widely from one day, week, or month to the next, inefficiencies are bound to arise. If you don’t know what to expect each day in your order fulfillment operations, you’ll experience higher labour and operational costs. Invest in good order management software to help you monitor, predict and automate your systems for more predictability. This will save you time, and be more accurate in your global fulfillment more often.
Optimize Warehouse Layout for Global Fulfillment
The way a warehouse is laid out has a massive effect on the efficiency of the fulfillment process of your business. Creating a layout that optimizes workflow in all areas is important to help prevent supply chain bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the process. Bringing in a specialist is an option to consider if you think that your global fulfillment centre needs a complete revamp of your layout. They can help you optimize your warehouse space, so that you store your products more efficiently without having to expand or rent additional space.
Streamline Order Picking
Order picking is one of the central components of any distribution center. Optimization of the picking operation is important since even small inefficiencies in the picking aspect of your order fulfillment can affect your bottom line. So it’s vital to optimize how the picking operation works. Small changes, like bundling orders into single units in your global fulfillment center can lead to huge improvements in efficiency. A 3PL will have highly experienced pickers, so if you outsource your fulfillment, you can benefit from their expertise.
Optimize Slotting
Slotting is when you organize your fulfillment centre’s inventory before it’s picked, processed and fulfilled. Like picking, optimizing your slotting efforts will lead to more efficient fulfillment with small changes that are cost effective. Minor adjustments, like keeping your best selling products in the most accessible slots, will enhance your order fulfillment. It’s important to view slotting as a high level function in your fulfillment operations and follow best practices to ensure that your products are shipped in the fastest possible time frame.
Reduce Touches and Handling
It’s important to monitor the average number of touches of a typical product in your facility. The more touches that are involved, the more room for human error and mishandling that could lead to the wrong products being shipped to a customer, labelling errors and lost inventory. Reducing touches and handling of inventories will eliminate the chances of damage and theft, while at the same time increasing the speed of an efficient global fulfillment process.
Utilize an RFID System
Transparency and data tracking at every level of the supply chain is critical to helping you develop solid analytics. And analytics are necessary for making impactful changes on a daily level. With radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and detailed tracking software, you can open up a higher level of transparency and tracking throughout your global fulfillment process.
Minimize Packing during Global Fulfillment
It should be a priority of your fulfillment operation looking for increasing efficiency to utilize the least amount of packaging as possible. More packaging leads to more steps, more handling, more time, more money, and more waste. Your aim is to figure out how to best protect products in transit with the least amount of materials.
Summary
Establishing an efficient global fulfillment operation should be one of the most important aspects of your ecommerce or dropshipping business. With the right planning and systems in place, you can eliminate most of the costly and time consuming operations. Working with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) is an amazing way to provide a seamless ordering experience for your customers, and take the hassle out of managing the logistics and fulfillment process yourself. If you’re fulfilling orders yourself, take the time to ensure that you have the right systems in place and reduce the chances of any errors occurring that could lead to disruptions.
Turn to Fulfillman for Your Global Fulfillment Needs
Contact us today at Fulfillman. We provide a wide range of services including Global Fulfillment, China Sourcing, Drop Shipping, Third Party Logistics, and lots more. Our trusted experts will be happy to speak with you and provide suitable answers to your questions and concerns. A fantastic experience awaits you.
