What is the Process for Outsourcing My Company’s Fulfillment & Shipping Needs?

One of the most critical steps in serving a customer is to ensure timely and accurate order fulfillment, which also involves shipping a product through the most efficient channels. Your business can execute each step of the customer engagement process and still fall short of meeting expectations by implementing an inferior fulfillment and shipping program.

Outsourcing fulfillment and shipping involves hiring a third-party logistics company such as Complete Mailing & Printing to handle this critical last step in the customer engagement process. Businesses benefit from outsourcing fulfillment and shipping for several reasons. First, your business quickly scales up or down operations based on customer demand. Second, you enjoy cost savings by implementing a much more efficient fulfillment model. Your business is no longer on the financial hook for expenses like labor, equipment, and warehousing. Third, your customers receive better service because of faster shipping times and enhanced product order accuracy. Other reasons to outsource fulfillment and shipping responsibilities include reducing legal liabilities and gaining access to the most advanced technology.

Now that you understand the benefits of outsourcing fulfillment and shipping responsibilities, what are the steps you should take to achieve optimal performance?

Choose the Right Partner

Many factors come into play when choosing the best partner to handle your company’s fulfillment and shipping needs. It starts with identifying your needs, such as knowing where your customers live and ensuring your new partner has warehouses close to where your customers live. Then, you should consider the technology used by a potential partner, such as the type of inventory management software that integrates flawlessly with your technology platform. The partner that handles your company’s fulfillment and shipping responsibilities also should possess expertise in moving the types of products sold to your customers.

Prepare for the Switch

Choosing the right partner to handle your company’s fulfillment and shipping responsibilities is just the first step to making the transition work. You also must prepare for the switch by factoring in order SKU counts, order volume, and storage requirements. Planning for the transfer of inventory represents one of the most important phases of the transition to outsourcing fulfillment and shipping. This includes closely coordinating shipping logistics, labeling requirements, and inventory management procedures. Training your team members to adapt to the new fulfillment and shipping model also represents an important step in the preparation process.

Monitor Your Partner’s Performance

Your business should set clear metrics for your partner to achieve fulfillment and shipping goals. Establish KPIs for order accuracies, shipping times, and customer feedback. You should assign one or more team members to track and report on the established KPIs to highlight where your fulfillment and shipping partner needs to improve services.

Communication represents the key factor for monitoring performance, such as daily check-ins and once-a-month live online meetings to address issues and/or discover better opportunities.

Improve Performance

It is one thing to stay on top of your fulfillment and shipping partner’s performance. It is quite another thing to take the metrics you have gathered and then devise strategies to enhance operations. Based on hard data and softer customer feedback, your business should be able to make quick changes to operations, such as improving technology and hiring more experienced team members.

You also want to implement measures that ensure your partner complies with industry best practices, as well as state and federal government regulations.

Digital Printing Services Will Help You Plan a Perfect Wedding

Murphy’s Law states that “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Event planners understand fully well the implications of Murphy’s Law, especially event planners in charge of organizing and managing weddings. However, digital printing services can ease the angst caused by a band backing out or receiving the wrong number of chairs for a wedding dinner. With a seemingly never-ending number of items on a wedding planner's to-do list, digital printing services can alleviate an overcrowded work schedule.
​
Digital printing refers to a process that includes applying toner or liquid ink over a wide range of printing surfaces. Because the process does not require the use of expensive and cumbersome plates, digital printing helps wedding planners save both time and money when organizing their big events. Create a digital template for a type of printing request, and return to the template to make changes in just a few minutes whenever necessary.

Digital printing produces a much higher quality product, as well as offers design flexibility and makes it easier to fix mistakes.

The following five digital printing services will help you plan a perfect wedding.

Invitations

Making a positive first impression for a wedding starts by sending out stylish invitations. Digital printing creates an invitation that presents visual appeal, while at the same time allowing you to present more information in regards to the big day. This type of digital printing service also works flawlessly with custom mailing services such as bulk mail.

Menus

As with invitations, wedding menus often change on the fly, sometimes up to the last minute before the big event. Using digital printing services allows a wedding planner to make last-minute changes to menus, whether the changes concern an entree or the presentation of a different salutation. Event planners also have much more flexibility to change the size of a wedding menu by working with digital printing services.

Business Cards

As a wedding planner, you have to stay in close contact with many people, from the caterer of the special event to the photographer who captures the magic of the big day. Staying in contact with other professionals is best done by handing out business cards designed and printed with digital tools. The flexibility of designing business cards with digital printing tools is especially important if you decide to change your logo or slogan.

Seating Cards

If the wedding you are in charge of planning includes a sit-down meal, you must create cards to organize seating arrangements. As with most other components of planning a wedding, the names of attendees can change up to seconds before the couple walks down the aisle. Digital printing tools enable you to make name changes quickly to accommodate last-second requests. You also can quickly change table numbers as well.

Same-Day Service

None of the previous four types of digital printing services would be possible without same-day service. You need to work with a business that offers same-day service for any type of digital printing request, from increasing the number of invitations to creating a different design for the wedding menus. Same-day service for digital printing services should include a turnaround time for any request of just a couple of hours.