Order Fulfillment

Order information is fed to OFS’s warehouse management system (WMS). This commonly occurs via an integration between your eCommerce platform (e.g., Amazon, Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce) and OFS. WMS is a software application that handles all operations of the fulfillment warehouse, including inventory management.  After the order is received, it’s time for picking and packing and shipping.

The Pick.  Once an order is received by the WMS, the system directs warehouse associates to then “pick” the ordered items from inventory. WMS is programmed to assign the most efficient picking pattern to associates in order to reduce walking distance and overlap, and therefore to minimize labor costs. OFS understands that your goal is to minimize “cost per order” for fulfillment activities. The picked items for each order are scanned (which updates inventory in the WMS) and set aside for packaging.

The Pack.  After being picked, each order’s items are compiled and placed – along with dunnage and any other extra materials (e.g., promotional materials) – into the appropriate box or bag.  The printed shipping label is then affixed to the outer package. Quality Assurance Measures take place at this stage to ensure what was ordered is what was picked. Checks include order accuracy, packaging appropriateness, and labeling accuracy.  Once QA is complete, the finished packages are staged for carrier pickup.

The Ship. You might have your own agreements with parcel shipping partners, or OFS can manage parcel shipping on your behalf. If your volumes are modest, there could be a significant cost benefit to shipping under OFS negotiated agreements with carriers. OFS will negotiate rates based on its aggregate volume across many different clients. Using OFS rates may reduce your parcel costs, which will be the largest portion, by far, of your total fulfillment costs.

3PL Pick and Pack Fulfillment

While these are the primary functions of pick-and-pack order fulfillment, just about every aspect of the process is customizable.  Your products and your needs – in terms of inventory, eCommerce platform, reporting, promotions, and visibility – can dictate exactly how your fulfillment operation is set up.  

If you’ve controlled every aspect of your operation until now, it may seem difficult to relinquish that control and trust someone else to handle everything correctly.   At OFS, we understand this and are happy to customize our process to deliver exactly what you need.

In addition to our fulfillment center and 3PL capabilities, OFS pride ourselves on being flexible – and that includes the volumes we work with.  We work with smaller eCommerce companies who have a handful of orders a day, as well as customers who routinely have over 1,000 orders a day. 

We’re also flexible in terms of our WMS.  We prefer to use our own WMS when we can, but we’ll also install your system at our warehouses when that makes the most sense. Most eCommerce entrepreneurs want to focus on growing the business, without getting caught up in the details of getting orders out the door. For these people, OFS can be a great ally in the growth journey. We have the know-how and infrastructure to scale up as the business grows, so that costs parallel the revenue stream.