A fulfillment service is a third-party warehouse that prepares and ships your orders for you. The major benefit of a fulfillment center is, of course, the time and effort it saves you. Your alternative is to manage all order fulfillment and shipping in-house.
Small businesses that have limited staff and space, can result in lower customer satisfaction due to longer fulfillment times. The best warehouse fulfillment centers focus on getting your customers their orders as quickly as possible, so you can spend your time on the other parts of running your business.
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Outsourcing fulfillment often saves you money over fulfilling in-house, as well. When you manage your own fulfillment, you have to handle warehousing, labor, order management, packaging costs, and shipping—not to mention the resources to keep track of all these various costs and supply needs. Because of economies of scale, fulfillment centers can often offer you all of these services at a lower cost.
In short, fulfillment centers let you offer your customers a better delivery experience while also costing you less time and usually less money to achieve that delivery experience.
Each 3PL has a whole team of logistics experts and support staff who are there to help you along the way. They manage all of the labor needed for receiving, inventory management, and order processing and shipping—giving you a new level of agility you might not achieve so easily on your own.
