What is order fulfillment in POS? How to choose the right method for your business?

Good or bad online shopping experiences both leave an impression on consumers, but the worst experiences stay in their minds the longest, and that’s not what retailers want people to associate with their brand. In today’s market, many consumers have reported that they stopped buying from a business because of a poor customer experience. To improve on this, a retailer can differentiate their eCommerce store from its competitors by the way a business fulfills orders. Order fulfillment is an important part of the overall sales process. This is probably a complicated and time-consuming process. However, it can be optimized with the right strategies and ultimately improve customer satisfaction, increase repeat business, and reduce costs. In this article, we would like to introduce what is order fulfillment in POS and how to choose the right method for your business.

What is order fulfillment?

A lot of people have asked the question what is order fulfillment? It has been suggested that this is the completion of the order process, but this is still not a correct explanation. So, what is order fulfillment? This can be simply understood as the entire process from the time a customer places an order to the time the product is delivered to the user, including picking up, storing, packing, and delivering to the buyer on time.

This seems easy, but with the rapid development of E-Commerce today, it is quite difficult. According to a report, Amazon has to process an average of 18.5 orders per second. As a result, this work has become an essential part of the business, applying the latest knowledge and innovations from logistics, and incorporating a wide range of other resources.

This whole process consists of five main steps, starting from strategic sourcing and ending with shipping. It typically involves inventory management, supply chain management, order processing, quality control, and customer support which need to report problems or make product exchanges or returns. 

Much of the order fulfillment process can take place in a single warehouse that is well organized and depends on the size of the business. Many small businesses have a simple process on their own while large businesses require a more complex strategy. However, the main goal is to bring efficiency to the customer to get an order that is as reliable and as inexpensive as possible.

How to choose the right method for your business?

Optimize the flow

Once you have answered the question of what is order fulfillment, businesses need to choose the correct implementation method. To do that, managers must optimize operational flows, starting with inventory management optimization first. This is a difficult job but brings many benefits to businesses. If you can create a detailed and clear warehouse management process, warehouse operations will become fast and simple. In addition, the stock data will be accurate and up-to-date to ensure that products are always available to meet customer orders and prevent out-of-stock situations. This job also includes predicting demand and making accurate production or purchasing decisions, thereby reducing waste and costs and increasing revenue for the company. Besides, the backlog of inventory will also be solved thanks to the appropriate marketing strategies if the retailer can control this. To optimize order fulfillment, incoming inventory, which may come from a company, other departments, or a third-party warehouse, needs to be checked and counted to ensure consistent quality and quantity expected to be received. Business users can use QR (quick response) codes to attach to products to make tracking easier.

Once the goods are received by the warehouse, they are either inventoried and disbursed immediately or sent to short-term or long-term storage. Items are ideally stored just long enough to help the organization deliver orderly merchandise for current sales, rather than holding products for future sale. So, a warehouse shouldn’t store inventory for long periods but instead creates a process that allows for a steady flow of product in and out.

Order processing is the most important process when learning about what is order fulfillment. Every eCommerce business needs to have a fast and reliable processing system. It needs to be an integrated software solution that can seamlessly take customer orders and direct the order fulfillment process from start to finish. Importantly, it can integrate with repositories to accomplish this.

Another important step in order processing is shipping. For this to be done correctly and to customer satisfaction, double-checking the order before shipping is necessary. By doing this, risks such as sending the wrong item or shipping to the incorrect address will improve so as not to affect customer confidence. A thorough inspection of orders also helps reduce the risk of damage in transit, another factor that negatively impacts the customer experience.

The final step in the order processing cycle is the return process which begins with the inclusion of shipping documents and a return label with the customer’s original order. When a customer returns a product for an exchange or refund, care must be taken to ensure it is accurate and meets the customer’s needs. The return process includes quality control checks and the classification of returned products accordingly. Returned products are then restocked, returned to the supplier or manufacturer for a refund or distributor credit, or sent to a recycling center.

Choose the suitable POS

Choosing an appropriate order fulfillment method goes hand in hand with choosing an optimal solution that supports the steps in the processing process. One of the best support tools is the modern point-of-sale (POS) system. What businesses need to do is look for POS software that supports intelligent inventory management, quick and accurate order processing, and regular order and goods status updates to ensure order fulfillment is seamless and smooth. This is what enhances the customer experience and helps them stay with the business longer.

ConnectPOS is leading cloud POS software. This system provides a powerful centralized data feature, combined with an intelligent inventory management solution – the Multi-Source Inventory. This combination with support for information management, reporting, and updates will give retailers a fast, accurate order fulfillment process that helps support more successful orders and increase revenue.

Conclusion

What is order fulfillment is a question asked by many eCommerce retailers just starting. Understanding the process and implementation to find the most appropriate solution for the order processing process will help businesses achieve their goals and retain more customers. If you are looking for a tool to help optimize this process, feel free to contact us.