What is a Fulfillment Service and Why Should I Use One?

As a provider of fulfillment services at FSI, we certainly have our opinions and strategic positioning about why someone would use our fulfillment services over any others. But an independent source, Business Knowledge Source, helps explain a question that comes before “Why FSI”, namely, why someone should use a fulfillment company in the first place.

Before we get into what Business Knowledge Source has to say, let’s first cover why FSI’s clients use a fulfillment services company. Many of our clients do so because fulfillment is not their core business, and using FSI for their order fulfillment, inventory management and kit packing allows them to stick to what they do best. There’s a lot more that goes into fulfilling an order than simply pulling something off of the shelf and shipping it. Our clients stick to what they do best, and they trust us to be their fulfillment experts.

Managing fulfillment takes space (square footage) and personnel, both of which are expensive. Businesses who handle their fulfillment internally must commit to a fixed amount of space whether they need it consistently or not. Likewise, they'll hire a fairly fixed number of employees to handle the fulfillment whether they need them all day or not. Whereas with an outsourced fulfillment provider such as FSI, businesses pay only for the space and personnel time that is actually needed. Our employees are receiving inventory, pulling orders, packing orders, shipping orders, kit packing, handling returns management (and don’t forget your customer service reps) for many clients, but our clients only pay based on the number of orders that they have – not every employee that is needed for all aspects of the fulfillment process. And because we have streamlined systems and significant economies of scale, we can provide these services with far greater accuracy and with less overall cost.

Anyway, those are some of the reasons why our clients use a fulfillment company. Here’s what the independent source of Business Knowledge Source had to say about why you should use a fulfillment services company.

http://businessknowledgesource.com/blog/_what_is_a_fulfillment_service_and_why_should_i_use_one_021971.html