Starting a business is an exciting time in any owner’s life.
There’s so much potential ahead and nothing but blue skies in the forecast. But as your company grows, reality starts to set in. You need help and in a big way. There aren’t enough hours in a day and there haven’t been for a while. You have to find a solution or you’re going to end up bankrupt or in the hospital. Maybe it’s time to outsource something.
Outsourcing Fulfillment Just Makes Sense
Rather than going down with dramatic flare, you may just want to contact some 3rd party logistics companies to find out what it would take to transfer your fulfillment operations to their dedicated facilities. After all, they have the experience and relationships it would take you years to acquire.
Businesses everywhere are starting to see the value in an order fulfillment partner, for reasons like:
- Getting time back to focus on their business. Unless shipping is your core business, giving that job over to your 3PL is going to free up a lot of your time. You can then get back to lead generation, product sourcing or designing new and better offers.
Whatever your core business is, you should be focusing on it, not on pick, pack and ship or product distribution. You know there are only so many hours in the day, spend them wisely.
- Getting access to automation and virtually limitless scalability. Your building has limited storage, little space for shipping automation and you’d definitely need a lot more workers to keep on growing while handling your own shipments. And don’t forget all the training, the data analytics and the relationships you’d need to secure with larger shippers for bulk shipments.
A good 3rd party logistics company will loan you their trained teams, let you take advantage of their negotiated shipping prices and even expand your warehouse as far as it needs to go, all for a low monthly rate.
- Improving the customer experience. It’s frustrating for you and your customers when shipments are late or go missing entirely, but you don’t have the time to process orders every day. Even if you did, keeping so many customers informed about their shipment status, or foreseeing upcoming shipment problems, takes away from your duty in your company.
Using software that can track boxes to the truck they’re on, a fulfillment house can improve the customer experience exponentially. Sometimes a little bit of information goes a very long way.
Business owners like you deserve a break and reassurance that your efforts won’t soon hit a brick wall because your building can’t grow any bigger and your wallet’s too thin to buy or rent another space. More small businesses are making the easy choice to outsource their fulfillment to top 3rd party logistics companies, maybe it’s time you did, too.
