How to Choose the Right Order Fulfillment Software

What is order fulfillment software?

Order fulfillment software connects your sales channels to your supply chain. It allows you to manage your fulfillment in the same way you manage your ecommerce sales and marketing – digitally. 

Fulfillment software should connect into your tech stack either through a direct integration or API integration. Rather than becoming an additional platform to manage, it should supplement and enhance your current processes.

Order Fulfillment Software Capabilities

An order fulfillment software should automate as many processes as possible to simplify your operations, reduce the opportunity for human error, and create a more resilient and scalable supply chain. 

At a base level, fulfillment software should connect directly to your ecommerce shopping cart, marketplaces (like Walmart Marketplace and Amazon), and order management systems (OMS). Direct integration to all of your sales channels simplifies your day-to-day operations with the following capabilities:

• See order statuses and inventory levels across all channels and warehouse locations in a single view
• Automatically drop orders from your shopping cart or marketplace
• See warehouse performance metrics across all locations
• Monitor delivery statuses and access real-time tracking information

Ultimately, this level of automation and visibility will save you time as well as cut back on customer service requests.

What to Look for in an Order Fulfillment Software

Not all fulfillment softwares are created equal. Before investing time and resources in adding a new platform to your tech stack, make sure you will have the following capabilities.

1. Automated Order Orchestration: 

New orders should be sent automatically to the warehouse for fulfillment. This speeds up the fulfillment process and eliminates cumbersome manual uploads.

Look for smart order orchestration that routes orders to the warehouse closest to the end customer for the shortest possible time in transit (TNT).

2. Inventory Management: 

You should be able to see inventory levels across all warehouse locations and reallocate inventory based on demand. This will help prevent stockouts, which lead to frustrating customer experiences and missed sales opportunities.

Regular and accurate inventory cycle counts will help minimize shrinkage due to loss or theft. Your warehouse partner should ensure at least 99% inventory cycle count accuracy.

Look for in-depth inventory reporting that allows you to set reorder notifications and easily reallocate inventory to serve your best-performing sales channels.

3. Delivery Tracking: 

Tracking numbers should automatically sync with sales orders, and the software should immediately send customers shipping confirmations.

Today’s consumers value visibility and reliability. In fact, a survey by UPS Capital revealed that 74% of today’s consumers expect accurate tracking information on online purchases.

4. In-Depth Reporting: 

Look for a fulfillment software that can aggregate sales and fulfillment data to create actionable reporting around demand forecasting and inventory balancing to enable more proactive supply chain planning.

Ultimately, a powerful order fulfillment software will help you make more efficient use of your time and money, so you can focus more resources on your core competencies.

Benefits of Fulfillment Reporting

Many merchants regularly access sales and marketing reports but overlook fulfillment and supply chain reporting. However, fulfillment reporting can offer powerful insights to drive more efficiency and profitability, including:

• SKU level profitability: Fulfillment costs and storage costs play an important role in profitability. Measuring the full cost of goods sold (COGS), all the way to your customers doorstep, will help you determine which SKUs to prioritize.
• SKU velocity: Monitoring sales velocity at the SKU level will help you determine the ideal reorder quantities in order to balance bulk supplier discounts with healthy inventory turns.
• Geographic order distribution. You may learn that most of your customers are concentrated on the East Coast. If you have been importing into a West Coast port, you might consider re-routing shipments to an East Coast port closer to lower transit times.

Benefits of Order Fulfillment Software

eCommerce sales channels are digital by design, but most people don’t think of technology solutions when they think of supply chain and fulfillment. However, the supply chain must have a digital connection point to keep up with ecommerce sales growth.

Beyond automating and simplifying fulfillment processes, order fulfillment software helps you make more informed decisions about where and how much inventory you should carry to best serve your end customers. 

Known as inventory distribution, stocking your inventory in multiple locations to lower time in transit (TNT) benefits your business in two distinct ways:

1. Meeting Expectations for Shipping Speed: Your customers – consumers and retail partners alike – expect fast shipping. Distributing inventory enables the fast shipping that today’s ecommerce-first environment has normalized.
2. Control Fulfillment and Delivery Costs: If you’re fulfilling orders from a single warehouse, you’re likely sending long-zone shipments to reach many of your customers. Long-zone shipments drive up delivery costs and slow down delivery speed. Often, if you don’t have your inventory distributed, you end up relying on Next-Day Air shipments to meet customer expectations, which can be prohibitively expensive.

About Ware2Go’s Order Fulfillment Software

Ware2Go’s fulfillment software, FulfillmentVu has over 80 direct connections to sales channels, ERPs, Order Management Systems. Its open API enables unlimited integrations and webhook capabilities. 

FulfillmentVu is the single connection point between all sales channels and Ware2Go’s full-service fulfillment network. The distributed warehouse network is flexible and adaptable in order to scale quickly when demand shifts or channel requirements change. Key features of the fulfillment software include:

• Connected Channels – A fully customizable merchant portal enables easy access to connect fulfillment virtually any sales channel, ecommerce provider, marketplace, or EDI. The dashboard is configurable so you see only the information you want to see for day-to-day management of your business.
• Warehouse Management – FulfillmentVu’s warehouse management capabilities allow for, third party billing, lot and expiry tracking, serialization, more.
• Transport Flexibility – Ware2Go’s flexible fulfillment network is capable of managing a wide variety of transportation options from small parcel to less than load (LTL) and full truckload (FTL), as well as international shipping, UPS SurePost and UPS Mail Innovations. With FulfillmentVu, you can manage all transport modes and fulfillment types through a single dashboard.

FulfillmentVu’s advanced capabilities connect Ware2Go’s nationwide network to enable 1- to 2-day delivery across the US. The network is supported by Ware2Go’s industry-leading service level agreements (SLAs), which guarantee 99% accurate and on-time fulfillment, putaway time on inbounds, and same-day fulfillment on orders received before the warehouse cutoff time.

To learn more about Ware2Go’s technology and warehouse network, take a look at our solution.