Fulfilment Centres Are Major Industry Contributors: What Does It Mean?

Shipping companies, logistic service providers, warehouses, inventories, supply chains, and other terms are all familiar, and StoreFresh caters for all of these. However, what exactly is our ecommerce fulfilment centre, though?

Ours is a brick-and-mortar facility with many people, a lot of parcels, and a lot of movement, to put it another way. As an insider, however, it is the centre of all activity after a customer places an order until it is delivered to him.

You already know that an e-commerce website that lists a product for sale online must have that product in stock. An ecommerce fulfilment centre such as StoreFresh, on the other hand, does more than keep track of product inventory. It also handles sorting products by category, processing orders, packing products, and shipping them to customers’ doorsteps.

Amazon, the world’s largest marketplace, also operates the world’s largest fulfilment centre! However, it’s essential to keep in mind that running an ecommerce fulfilment centre in India can quickly go from convenient to expensive. It is recommended that you hire a fulfilment centre rather than setting up your own unless you have a large business or high margins. Because fulfilment centres serve a variety of e-commerce businesses, the cost of hiring them is relatively low.

What distinguishes fulfilment centres from warehouses?

A warehouse is a storage facility for a company’s inventory. Many e-commerce companies have their own/rented warehouses where they stock up on all/best-selling items.

StoreFresh fulfilment centres, on the other hand, are more like an ecommerce distribution centres. They are the location where your customer’s order is stored, packed (after receipt), and shipped. We’ve given a fun example to make it easier.

A warehouse is similar to a kitchen pantry. It’s where you go to stock up on food and store it for later use. A fulfilment centre, on the other hand, is like having a chef in your kitchen. The cook is in charge of retrieving food from the pantry, cooking it, and presenting it to you on a plate. All you have to do is listen to the praises for the delicious food.

What are the criteria for choosing a fulfilment centre?

While e-commerce businesses frequently provide doorstep delivery to customers who live thousands of miles away, they must be cautious when choosing a fulfilment centre. The real challenge here is defining your shipping radius precisely. Because today’s e-commerce businesses are driven by the buzzword “free shipping.” And the further your fulfilment centre is from your customers, the higher the shipping costs will be. As a result, it is advised that you select a fulfilment centre and keep your products close to your customers.

Connectivity

We cannot expect a fulfilment centre to be located in the middle of a residential complex, or even within the city’s densely populated premises, just because we want it to be close to our customers. As more ecommerce fulfilment centres are situatedin the outskirts of the city, you must choose StoreFresh formaximum and easy connectivity.

Highways nearby, freeways, service roads, road safety (especially during monsoons), exit ramps, average traffic, and so on are all things to consider. While it isn’t mentioned everywhere, we recommend that you look at each centre’s total fleet of vehicles. The greater the number of vehicles at their disposal, the faster orders will be fulfilled.

Workforce

E-commerce businesses will never be able to match the comfort of in-person shopping. What they can do, however, is provide super-fast delivery to the customer’s door. Imagine waiting for your order to arrive only to discover that a portion of it is missing or, worse, damaged.

When an order is delivered late, the business may lose customers. And the majority of the time, a gap at the fulfilment centre is the cause of angry customers. As a result, make sure that the centre you select has a skilled workforce. Larger centres, in particular, have a healthy balance of automated processes and experienced employees to ensure that errors are minimised.

Facilities

Even fulfilment centres have evolved from houses of manual labour to a mix of machine automation and highly skilled professionals in the age of technological advancement. Choose a centre that best meets your needs based on your products’ frequency, urgency, and demand. Also, look at the size of the centre to see if your products will be well-categorised or stacked in a corner. Examine the size of the infrastructure for staging and storing, the packaging station and supplies, and the transportation.

Environment

It’s important to remember that the location’s climate of an ecommerce fulfilment centre in India can make or break your business. In a tropical country like India, even the delivery of perishable goods must be lightning fast to ensure that the weather does not harm the product’s quality.

To do so, the fulfilment centre must be well-connected such as that of StoreFresh. The pharmaceutical industry is no exception. If you have a separate warehouse, make sure the distance between it and the fulfilment centre is not too great. Finally, look into the area of the fulfilment centre you choose for frequent flooding, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. After all, losing your products due to uncontrollable weather conditions is the worst!

What are the benefits of having a StoreFresh as your ecommerce fulfilment centre?

While owning an e-commerce business eliminates the need for a physical retail location, it necessitates inventory storage. And the warehouse is always this location. However, as previously stated, a warehouse only solves half of the problem. Your products must still be shipped. Rather than renting a warehouse to store items, stock your inventory in an ecommerce fulfilment centre such as StoreFreshthat stores and prepares them for shipping so that the parcel is completely and securely packaged when the shipping personnel arrives to collect it.

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An ecommerce fulfilment centre in Eastern India is vital for resolving backend delays. You can make placing an order on your website extremely simple, but if delivery takes too long, you risk losing the customer entirely. Sloppy packaging also gives the impression that the products have been tampered with.

It gives them the impression that the product is of poor quality, that they have been duped out of their money, or, worse, that they have been the victims of internet fraud. A fulfilment centre’s staff is trained to ensure that this is never an issue. They not only wrap your products nicely but also package them securely to ensure that bumpy roads, harsh weather, and even delays do not compromise their quality or cause damage.

If you ask us at StoreFresh, an e-commerce company is truly successful when its customers have no questions about anything other than the product price or variety. Because a fulfilment centre partnered with a reputable shipping company ensures that whatever needs to be shipped is done so easily, quickly, and efficiently.

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