There are so many ways to fulfill your business’s orders. If you are deciding the route you wish to go, either shipping your product on your own or hiring a 3PL, there are so many factors to consider. When fulfilling in-house, it requires a great eye on many moving parts of the process. When any part of your in-house fulfillment process breaks down, it can directly affect the brand of the company and every department of your company.
Here are some things that could go wrong when fulfilling in-house.
Slow or Late Order Shipments
If you are having any kind of issue getting your products out of your door and on your customers front door, your business is going to have a hard time growing. An increase in orders can cause a kink in your fulfillment operations.
With only a couple orders a day, having all your fulfillment in-house is probably the best for your business. But if you are focusing on the marketing side of things and creating a way for more people to discover your products, a large increase to a few dozen orders per day can decrease the order accuracy as well as increase the late shipments if you are not prepared for those orders to come through.
Mistakes or delays in receiving inventory
Without having specialists, who are skilled in the fulfillment process, there is a higher chance of having silly mistakes occur like improperly receiving the product inventory into the system.
With this, if your team is backing up in order fulfillment, receiving new product will get postponed, leaving your valuable inventory sitting in random areas in your warehouse, clogging the space up. This is the time where you warehouse manager, which might be you, will need to make the choice on if receiving is priority over order fulfillment.
Employee Turnover and Training
Having a turnover is not fun for anyone. Unfortunately, it is a fact of business. Once an employee quits or is fired, they will need to be replaced, meaning you will need to spend more time and money on hiring and training new employees. But I guess its just part of the process, right? You ultimately will need people to pick, pack, receive, replenish, and manage inventory. And I don’t even want to think about seasonal hires and the amount of time and money spent to train employees that will be leaving in a matter of 2 months.
Running out of Warehouse Space
Real estate can be pretty pricey. If you are paying more for your space than you want to me, its going to get much worse when you run out of space in your very expensive warehouse. You do want your business to grow, its almost a good thing when you run out of room but being prepared for that growth is a whole other thing. One of the issues with in-house fulfillment is when companies sign long-term leases that do not let there be any flexibility because there were some wrong forecasts for their business needs.
How to Avoid the Problems with In-House Fulfillment
If you have either experienced these difficulties already or if you are not prepared for these possibilities, consider hiring a fulfillment center. Here at Launch Fulfillment, we have the ability to take care of all of these situations for you. We make sure each order is out on time to make sure your customer gets their package as soon as possible. We take care of your inventory management, making sure we receive your product in a timely matter. We have our own employees that you do not have to worry about at all. We also have 5 warehouses between Utah and Kentucky, we have plenty of room for your product!
If you are not in the right place to outsource your fulfillment to a third-party logistics company, try to enjoy the stage you are currently in with your business. There are so many things to learn. Growing is inevitable when you are totally emersed in your business. Your experience learning about shipping while shipping out your own packages might be something you look back at as a unique part of your company’s story.