Fulfilment for The Developing Small Business

Let’s Meet Small Business Owner Tim

Tim is an ambitious entrepreneur. Eight months ago Tim decided to start a business on the side in his living room. He began an online shop selling board games. Not just any board games, but traditional children’s games made of wood. Tim sources these games from UK manufacturers.

To get things moving Tim bought a domain name and purchased a simple website builder package through the same company he bought his domain. Tim began selling four different games but as his business started to develop and the social chatter began to take place his product range grew from four games to now currently ten. When his range grew so did his stock quantities. His living room became his work shop and storage facility.

Within months Tim began to see his business take off. Tim was receiving 10-30 orders a day from his website. The growth of his business started to take a toll on his work and personal life. The volumes of orders began to eat his time outside of work. He was a one man band. Every order that came in, he personally processed, packed and shipped. Tim understood early on the seriousness of customer satisfaction. Tim made it a point to always respond to customer enquiries as soon as he can. This led him to slowly lose focus at work.

Tim was now in the crossroads. He started a business to make additional money on the side, but never considered it to be his main focus. However, now he is finding little to no time to manage his business, work priorities and his personal life effectively.

Out Growing Your Small Business Process

Tim is not the only victim of his success. When you run a small business, there are many factors that go into its growth. Being able to hold and manage stock as well as shipping your products are major catalysts for development, because it allows you to sell to so many more people. Processing orders efficiently will grow your customer base. In order to pack and ship successfully there are many variables to consider.

Scalable Fulfilment Services

JEM Marketing and Fulfilment has multiple onsite secure and modern storage facilities. Our storage facilities have the capacity to store your inventory which can be quickly picked, packed and shipped within minutes of an order being placed. Our staff picks, packs and ships thousands of customised orders a day to locations around the world.

JEM uses its very own bespoke fulfilment software that was developed and is maintained in house with our own programmers. This allows us to provide variety of bespoke solutions that most fulfilment companies cannot offer. We have the flexibility to customise reports, connect to ecommerce platforms, and customise inventory control options. JEM is able to offer traditional response fulfilment with tomorrow’s technology.

JEM also offers clients access to our post optimisation services so that clients can pick the most effective delivery method for their business. We’ve partnered with many top shipping companies to get our clients the best rates and services possible.

The Light For Tim

Tim can now relax and maintain his growing small business with the help of the services provided by JEM. Tim has now let go of his time consuming administrative duties and currently focuses on growth related activities. JEM currently manages Tim’s stock, order processing, ecommerce platform and customer support. Tim can now enjoy the fruits of his labours, enjoy his personal life and maintain his focus at work.

Does this story sound familiar?

Contact our team at JEM.

 Enquire today, and discover how we can help

Please Call 01483 20444

Read how JEM can optimise your ecommerce success.

By Erik Miller

JEM Marketing & Fulfilment Services Ltd.
The Invisible Link- Between your business and its customers
www.j-e-m.com 

JEM Marketing & Fulfilment Services Info

By Erik Miller

JEM Marketing & Fulfilment Services Ltd.
The Invisible Link- Between your business and its customers
www.j-e-m.com

What is Fulfilment?

Additionally, What is the Fulfilment Process?

By Definition: Fulfilment is the process of receiving, packaging and shipping order for goods (Entrepreneur.com) 

Fulfilment services are business processes often outsourced to fulfilment companies also known as fulfilment houses. These businesses are third party services that take care of fulfilling client orders on the business owner's behalf.

What's involved in the fulfilment process?

• Data Processing & Order Processing
• Storage & Warehousing
• Inventory Management
• Pick and Pack
• Customer Services
• Banking
• Ecommerce
• and more...

 The fulfilment house works close with their clients to ensure each task that is outsourced is followed according to the clients brand and or company ethos.

The fulfilment process begins by receiving the products from the clients supplier, storing the clients inventory, receiving the orders from the clients sales pipeline, picking and packaging the orders as they come through and sending them off via post. Fulfilment can additionally include payment processing, customer service handling and returns handling.

Note: Fulfilment services can be used outside of ecommerce in other areas such as response handling, promotional fulfilment and even market research.

Who can use Fulfilment Solutions?

• Ecommerce
• Retail
• Market Research
• Promotional Marketing
• Direct Mail
• and more...

When it comes to fulfilment, because every company is different, the fulfilment process varies between each company. Companies have two options when it comes to handling fulfilment.

1st Option: In-House Fulfilment
It's quite common for businesses to handle their own fulfilment, but as time progresses and the sales grow, in-house fulfilment can eat away valuable time that could be spent on growth related activities as well as cost you financially. Keep in mind as your business and sales volumes grow so will your need for additional storage space and staff.

Growth Related Activities: These activities could be anything from product research and development, marketing and or promotional campaigns.

2nd Option: Outsource to Fulfilment House
A fulfilment house can free up your time by allowing them to take on your daily business processes. Businesses who switch to using a fulfilment house enjoy the seasonal flexibility, lower shipping costs and convert fixed costs to variable costs.

              Seasonal Flexibility:
                  When the holiday seasonal rush is right around the corner businesses no longer need to stress and worry about taking on temporary staff to support the influx of demand. This also means that those businesses do not need to worry about training new staff and or purchase new equipment to keep up with the rush and when the rush dies down their are no excess employees or idle equipment.

              Lower Shipping Costs:
                   Since shipping is a key service that most all fulfilment houses dabble in, their mail volumes grant them the ability to get lower mailing rates that your business might not be able to negotiate.

               Convert Fixed Costs to Variable Costs:
                   Storage facilities regardless if they are purchased or leased come attached with fixed costs. Some fixed costs could be rent, heating / air conditioning, plumbing and security services to name a few.

Basic Fulfilment Solutions include

 

Warehousing

The fulfilment house should be able to store your goods safely and secure in their storage facilities.
When you store your products with a fulfilment house they will generally monitor your stock levels and communicate when the need arises for stock replenishment.

Order Processing

How your orders get passed onto your fulfilment provider. This can be done either by API integration, Direct Download and or CSV just to name a few possibilities. Once the order has been received by the fulfilment house, the fulfilment team will process the order by first selecting the ordered products from your stored stock and package the products then sending them out to the identified customer on the order.

Returns & Exchanges

In the event an order is processed and the customer is not satisfied its common that most fulfilment houses to handle customer returns. The fulfilment house can process returns, examine returned items and determine if they can be resold and of course replace the faulty and or damaged product or refund the order.

By Erik Miller

JEM Marketing & Fulfilment Services Ltd.
The Invisible Link- Between your business and its customers
www.j-e-m.com