E-Commerce is the fastest growing avenue for doing business anywhere. It has been for many years and it will be for many years to come. In support of this your operations need to be World Class.
It is certainly a challenge to establish the sales, marketing, merchandising and transactional infrastructure to offer an efficient and effective E-Commerce solution to your customers.
At the core of the Supply Chain an enormous challenge is to have a highly competitive and compelling E-Commerce Fulfillment solution. So what are the key principles that you must have in place to design, construct and deliver a leading E-Commerce Fulfillment solution?
There are certainly many options for creating the Fulfillment engine that you need to participate in the E-Commerce space.
For many smaller companies it is a better use of their resources to outsource this service capability to Logistics companies, Distributors, or Fulfillment service providers. Even your competitor, Amazon, offers a “Fulfillment By Amazon” service which you can use.
Even larger companies whose competency and expertise is not in Supply Chain may choose to outsource this capability.
However your company may already have its own Fulfillment capability. Or you may be one of the companies that provides a Fulfillment outsourcing service to the other companies mentioned above.
In either case there are a set of principles that should be applied in order to deliver a leading, if not World Class, E-Commerce Fulfillment capability.
The attached Infographic provides a high level summary of those principles. We have applied these to great effect resulting in a capability which allows an order to be picked, packed and on the dock in 4 minutes. For greater details see our blog post at E-Commerce (Part 5) – Click to Ship in 4 Minutes! … Principles for Designing a World Class Fulfillment Solution
World Class Fulfillment in Conclusion
There are many details that need to be worked through to ensure that these principles are applied to great effect. However they are at the core of delivering a World Class E-Commerce Fulfillment solution.
And this solution is extremely cost effective and competitive both from the perspective of capital investment and ongoing day-to-day operation.
Such a transformation requires conviction to challenge all internal paradigms and an unwavering focus on Change Leadership. But it can be done! It has been done!
Now it’s your turn!