How do Fulfilment Centres Work?

Fulfilment Centres 

Fulfilment centres are third-party service providers that will store your stock, process your orders, and ship them out to your customers, fast and efficiently. The fulfilment centre is a core part of the supply chain and is the centre of all logistics processes needed to get an order from a seller to their customer. It will handle a range of areas, such as storing, picking, packing, and then shipping orders out to your customer.

A 3PL provider (like GNOC), have warehouses that are used as fulfilment centres, and eCommerce businesses put their trust in 3PL’s to streamline all their operations and ensure their customers receive their orders correctly and on time.

The process

You may be wondering how fulfilment centres work, and the process is fairly simple but contains lots of steps that must all be done carefully and efficiently. The process consists of all the work that will get online orders to your customers door, and it begins with storing all your brand's stock in the fulfilment centre ready for your orders to start coming in.

Inventory management is a key step for fulfilment centres, as they must ensure your stock is kept safe whilst waiting to be purchased. When your stock arrives to a fulfilment centre it will be carefully counted and labelled to ensure it is correctly synced up with the 3PL’s systems, and they can keep an eye on stock count and returns. Stock must be checked regularly to ensure nothing is damaged, and if you’re a company who sells items that may go out of date, there needs to be regular checks in place for this.

When a customer orders from your online store, the 3PL’s system will be alerted straight away and that item will be picked by one of the warehouse team. The stock will easily be picked due to it being labelled, and once it has been through a quality control check, the warehouse team will begin to carefully pack it at the packing stand. If your items have specific packaging needs, this will have been discussed prior with your 3PL and they can offer these services to ensure your customer is receiving their items in perfect condition.

Once packed, there will be shipping labels printed, and the item will be sent out with the 3PL’s trusted couriers. 3PL’s can offer fast, next-day delivery options to your customers (as this is a key thing customers look for when ordering from eCommerce brands).

Services offered at fulfilment centres

There are many services offered at fulfilment centres, and you can take advantage of them all, or just the key ones your business requires. Services such as:

• Inventory management
• Picking products
• Specialised Packaging
• Packing items
• Labelling products
• Shipping orders
• Reverse logistics
• Amazon services

These are all services offered by 3PL’s and by utilising these services, you can save your business huge warehousing and staffing costs, as well as a lot of time. By not having to worry about logistics, you can begin to focus on other areas of your business in order to grow.

Benefits of fulfilment centres

Fulfilment centres not only work for B2C businesses, but also B2B, ensuring that no matter who your desired customer is, 3PL providers can pick, pack, and ship your stock directly to them. Not only can 3PL save your business so much more time, but it can transform your fulfilment process as orders are sent out faster, are picked more accurately and customers will be happier.

3PL makes it easy to manage all inventory, making it easier to know when items are out of stock, and can help you determine slow moving stock (and therefore help determine which items to put on sale), as well as taking care of your returns. All your inventory levels will be held in one place, making it easy for both you and your chosen 3PL to see everything.

Using a 3PL can improve your business in so many ways, and a key one is improving your customer service and experience. You can offer fast, free, and reliable shipping, as we all feel comfortable knowing your orders are being delivered correctly to your customers. This will overall help you grow and scale your business (and who doesn’t want that!)

Choosing GNOC

If you’re thinking about starting your 3PL journey today, why not enquire with GNOC, and fill out our simple requirement form here. By letting us know a brief description of your business and needs, we can help set out a plan with you to help start to grow and scale your business. Here at GNOC, we have 300+ brands who already out their trust in us to ship orders to their customers, and with over 10 years’ experience in warehousing and logistics, we know how things work round here.

Contact us today, and together we can work together and grow together.