What is Order Fulfillment?

Order fulfillment is one of the most important pieces of a business or organization’s membership, rewards, or eCommerce processing programs. By allowing members or consumers to sign up for extra added value through rewards programs, premium services, or by offering a product through an e-commerce setting on your website, program order fulfillment allows you to ship your perks, promotional material, or products quickly and efficiently. What does program order fulfillment currently look like for your business or organization? Is it disorganized, time-consuming, or over-running your in-house team? Teaming up with a fulfillment provider like ProList and utilizing their experienced team can offer speedy turn times and flexible, top-quality service to enhance your program’s success and build loyalty.

How does Order Fulfillment work?

Membership rewards programs, premium business services, and eCommerce sites all frequently utilize order fulfillment on some level. For eCommerce businesses or organizations with e-commerce services, this means once a customer heads to your website and decides on one of your promotional products, they move along to your POS checkout and place their order. Order fulfillment is then processed either from your own inventory, or, if your items are stored at an offsite warehouse or processing center, the order is then filled, processed and shipped by the fulfillment company. For those businesses and organizations that utilize rewards or membership based programs, program order fulfillment can look a little bit different.

In these situations, order fulfillment is based more on “batches” versus individual orders. Order data is typically provided to the fulfillment vendor on a regular, ongoing basis and fulfilled at certain increments of time. Items being fulfilled can vary from batches of printed materials to promotional items, welcome kits or franchise or point-of-purchase (POP) items. If any of these items are part of your businesses platform, program order fulfillment takes on a new meaning. From print on demand product collateral, thank you letters and mail pieces, to actual products or packages, fulfillment services mean that the items for your business support programs are picked, printed, packaged and shipped right from our fulfillment warehouse.

By utilizing a fulfillment service, business owners free up their own business space and personnel while being able to source a variety of products or materials that can be conveniently assembled and shipped quickly and efficiently right to your customers or members.

What to consider when choosing a fulfillment service provider

While some order fulfillment services providers may simply house your business’s products and materials and then compile your orders and ship them, other fulfillment companies can source your products or materials for you as well. This can eliminate a few steps in the process, from having to store unnecessary items versus producing them “just in time” to not having to deal with the headache of managing the purchasing and receiving of certain items.

Some key options to consider when looking for the right order versus fulfillment services company to fit your needs include thinking about which of these services you’ll need:

• Print on demand – Some promotional materials include instructions, newsletters, pamphlets, and other important print collateral that may go along with subscriptions, purchases, donations or rewards distribution. When a new customer expresses interest in your product, service, organization or brand they are sometimes immediately sent reading material. This material is best handled by printing at the time of fulfillment, versus inventorying large items of a variety of printed materials.
• Branded and non branded products – For some businesses and organizations, signing up for a service or donating to a cause means that those individuals are automatically sent “swag” or other materials as a welcome gift or perk. For example, a donation to your charity may mean that the donor receives a welcome package with a pen, keychain, or coffee mug. ProList order fulfillment services can help your organization not only source quality products to include in your welcome package, but can also handle any print on demand informational materials that might need to be included in each package. Sourcing a wide range of quality print and promotional products, both branded and non-branded – custom and generic, that meet your unique budget needs can be included as a service that your fulfillment company provides.

Putting together shipments with specialty packaging that includes your product and personalized printed materials is one area where businesses and organizations can enlist the help of order fulfillment services from ProList.

• Kitting – Some order fulfillment includes hand assembling kits. Other businesses may offer collateral kits for their services or products that require assembly. For example, a weight loss company may offer a variety of recognition products based on the different success tiers their program users have achieved. By housing your products with a fulfillment center, your customers or constituents – even franchise owners – can place requests for items where an organized processing center staff receives them, processes them for USPS or package shipping discounts then hand picks the items for each kit, assembles and prepares them, then ships them to their respective destinations in a timely fashion and uniform fashion.
• Specialty packaging – Creative and unique packaging can really help businesses and organizations stand out to their audiences. Order fulfillment services can help businesses come up with fun and interesting ways to produce your materials to deliver a memorable experience.
• Warehousing and Inventory Management – Housing inventory and managing inflows and outflows of hundreds or even thousands of items requires meticulous warehousing procedures and inventory management protocols. Finding a partner with a secure and organized space, adequate reporting and state of the art management processes is crucial to keeping costs down and having adequate inventory on hand to fulfill requests. Whether it’s products you’ve provided or products we’ve helped you source, when it comes to managing those products, a good vendor will have your back.

Today, there are a variety of services available for organizations that need to provide some sort of premium and program-based order fulfillment services to their customers or audiences. Finding the right supplier partner can be a bit daunting. Rest assured though, ProList’s wide range of fulfillment service options can be fully customized to create one of a kind support options. In addition, ProList’s work in direct mail, digital print, logistics and parcel shipping services means that we’ve done our research and understand the fulfillment landscape. We know that no business is the same, but one criteria is always constant: Ensuring that you’re working with an attentive, knowledgeable team that has your success in mind.

To save you time, space, and money on freight and shipping costs, a program order fulfillment center may be the best choice for you. Crafting engaging, personalized, high-quality print collateral and sourcing or managing the best products to meet specific program and budget requirements can be easy and hassle-free with ProList. For questions, or assistance in putting together your order fulfillment program, give us a call at 1-888-PROLIST or email sales@prolist.com . We’ll help you with as much or as little as you need us to. Our number one goal is to create fulfillment programs for our clients that take the worry out of things. Let us put our industry knowledge to work for you today!