As we purchase more products from our computers and mobile devices, we expect a certain amount of feedback and information that assures us our new gadget will make it to its new home safely. Many do not think past the point of receiving a tracking number, and some will check and make sure their payment was billed correctly. Most of these services are required to provide good customer support and keep your client happy. What many do not think about is what happens right after an online or mobile purchase is made.

If you have ever visited a warehouse you will soon understand how a business can be affected through your service and technology in its operations.  The success required to be an effective warehouse is a continuous communication connection that extends full circle from client, to the fulfillment team, and finally back to the client.

What makes a fulfillment operation stand out? The first and foremost is your people and the service they can offer your client. After you have that in place, you must develop sound processes and find or develop software that will fit the needs of your warehouse and the client.  There is a set of core needs that I will discuss.

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Receiving: Products are delivered to the warehouse in many ways, shapes, and forms.  Systems must be flexible to allow upstream communication from the vendor to the warehouse. Allowing vendors to input their own receivers that notify the warehouse ahead of time of inventory availability allows just-in-time capabilities.

Order Fulfillment: Flexibility is the key for any operation. Having the ability to capture orders from your B2C (Business to Consumer) or B2B (Business to Business) ecommerce website and feed them real-time to your warehouse from any location requires a thorough understanding of your client and their immediate needs. Bi-directional communications between your warehouse and your ecommerce site allows immediate warehouse inventory visibility to the client, with click-through tracking being fed from UPS or FedEx straight to your client in e-mail or embedded in the client’s ecommerce site.

Client Visibility: There are two sub-sections that a client could be considered in this category. One is a B2C model dealing mainly with retail and the other is a B2B, which would include more of a third party logistics warehousing needs.

  • B2C: Today’s consumers have very little time to research orders and log into multiple locations to make sure their order has been completed, charged, and shipped. A system should take the push approach that requires little effort from the consumer to find out the status of their order. By pushing e-mail/text/dashboard tools out to the consumer it creates a personalized shopping experience to know if their order is processing, shipped, and where and how soon they will receive their package.
  • B2C: This approach requires an open book approach to your client. Your client should have browser capabilities to log into your warehouse and see where their product is at any point and time. This also creates an environment for ad-hoc orders without having to send e-mails or phone calls. This encapsulates all order history in one place, which leads to consistent reporting.

Reporting: Most companies still use Excel as their main source of reporting. While this is a good tool for many functions, how much turn around time does it take to get those numbers from the warehouse system out to a readable format and sent to the client? As I mentioned earlier, reporting and having browser access to real-time reports that are readily accessible should be the standard. There are many reporting needs including stock status, turns, forecasting, and low stock to name a few. You should also allow for ad-hoc and flexible custom reporting needs based on your client.

This overview is a nice starting point to understand some of the basic requirements a customer must have for today’s fast paced economy. Do you feel like you are giving the best service and visibility to your products?