Common Terminologies Of Ecommerce Fulfilment

The world of eCommerce may appear vast, especially when attempting to comprehend the industry’s complex terminologies. If you’re new to this field, you might be perplexed trying to understand and differentiate between a variety of terms that are frequently used in the eCommerce industry.

Order fulfilment is one of the most important aspects of an eCommerce business. You’re bound to come across some specific terms, acronyms, and abbreviations while dealing with it. For example, suppose you’ve recently joined an eCommerce company and your boss has asked you to compile a list of low-inventory products by tracking their SKUs.

The world of eCommerce may appear vast, especially when attempting to comprehend the industry’s complex terminologies. If you’re new to this field, you might be perplexed trying to understand and differentiate between a variety of terms that are frequently used in the eCommerce industry.

To save you time looking up definitions, we’ve compiled a glossary of some of the most common and advanced order eCommerce fulfilment terms. Continue reading to master these eCommerce Order Fulfillment terms-

Third-Party Logistics, or 3 PL                                                     

These allow eCommerce companies in India to outsource all or part of their logistics processes. These services primarily include distribution, warehousing, and order fulfilment. StoreFresh, for example, specialises in integrated operations, warehousing, and transportation services that can be further customised to meet the needs of their customers.

Center for Fulfillment

An ecommerce fulfilment centre is a hub where an eCommerce business’ inventory management and order fulfilment activities take place. Everything happens inside a fulfilment centre, from receiving inventory to shipping products to end customers. StoreFresh operates fulfilment centres throughout East India where businesses inventory is stored, managed, picked up, packed, and shipped to customers the same day or the next day.

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Center for Distribution

A distribution centre is a facility that receives, temporarily stores inventory, and re-distributes goods based on customer orders. You may be confused between a warehouse and a distribution centre at this point, but there is a significant difference between the two. A warehouse is used to store inventory or goods for longer periods of time, whereas a distribution centre is focused on a faster turnover of goods; that is, inventory is held for a shorter period of time.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping, in layman’s terms, is a process in which the manufacturer, rather than the seller, fulfils orders directly. The seller’s job is to take customer orders and send them to the manufacturer for fulfilment.

Dropshipping is an order fulfilment method in which the manufacturer produces and stores the goods himself. The product is shipped directly from the manufacturer to the end customer whenever a customer places an order. For small businesses that are just getting their feet wet in the market, this is one of the most cost-effective order fulfilment processes.

Management of Inventory

The process of managing inventory levels, sales, and deliveries is known as inventory management. It also entails keeping track of inventory levels to ensure that there is always enough on hand. Inventory management includes the storage and processing of raw materials, components, and finished products, as well as the management of raw materials, components, and finished products. Click here to learn more about the best inventory management techniques for your eCommerce business.

Self-fulfillment

Self-fulfillment is an order fulfilment method in which an eCommerce seller or merchant handles every step of the order fulfilment process themselves, without the assistance of a third-party logistics provider. It’s common for new eCommerce businesses to manage inventory and pack orders from their homes or places of business.

Barcode

A barcode is a machine-readable data representation that contains information to help identify products more quickly. The information contained in a barcode is related to the purchase order.

A shipping barcode can be used to identify an order and provide access to information such as the contents of the carton, the customer’s name, the delivery address, and the shipping method. Purchase orders and return documents have barcodes that can be used to retrieve the appropriate record from the server.

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)

A SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is a unique number associated with a specific type of inventory in an eCommerce store. Internally, it’s used to keep track of the company’s inventory. SKUs are alphanumeric codes that provide information about a product’s most important features, such as price, colour, style, and brand size.

WMS (Warehouse Management System)

It is a warehouse management system that controls and automates warehouse operations. It improves the efficiency of warehousing operations for businesses. It helps the warehouse management team plan, organise, staff, direct, and control the use of available resources to move inventory within the warehouse on a daily basis. At the same time, it aids the staff in monitoring the warehouse’s movement and storage performance.

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SLA

A Service Level Agreement, or SLA, is a contract provided by the fulfilment service provider that explains how they will handle incoming orders, ship their items, and carry out their role in the overall business arrangement to the business owner. Order accuracy, the number of orders shipped each day, inventory shortages, and other factors are all reported in SLAs. These reports are an important part of order management because they provide a clear picture of expectations versus fulfilment provider deliveries.

Thus, these are a few of the most commonly used eCommerce fulfilment terminologies. Each term mentioned here is an important part of the entire process and ties it all together in a continuous stream of events that occur every day.

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