Scaling up your e-commerce business can become problematic when it comes to online order fulfilment. As your business grows, you may find that fulfilling customer orders in-house is no longer a feasible option. Managing an e-commerce business, your expertise probably falls within many areas that sit outside of logistics. Sourcing a third-party logistics provider could be a key piece of the puzzle – enabling you to continue to deliver inventory to your customers with a seamlessly integrated logistics solution.
What is a third-party logistics provider?
Third-party logistics (3PL) enables a business to outsource its fulfilment and logistics to a specialist third-party provider, including everything from picking and packing, warehousing, inventory management, transportation and order fulfilment.
The use of a 3PL provider supports a simple and seamless service, that ensures items are automatically shipped to your customer when they purchase online, via a neatly integrated IT system. Taking away the requirement for in-house distribution, your 3PL provider will take care of your warehousing, inventory management and distribution.
A 3PL will offer innovative strategies to transform your supply chain into a cost-effective, responsive model. Consider what we’re doing at Warehouse Anywhere as an example. In contrast to the traditional single distribution center (DC) model, we have pioneered and perfected forward-deployed inventory management. The common hub-and-spoke DC model is not able to keep up with the pace of business, with large inventories and infrequent truck service. We’ve developed the forward-deployed model for warehousing and distribution that uses a larger number of smaller locations to move products closer to the customer. This decentralized, hyper-connected model provides the responsiveness needed to meet customers’ expectations for timely delivery.
No matter if you’re direct-to-consumer or in a service-level agreement situation, customers expect overnight delivery, or as close to it as possible. The Warehouse Anywhere system can optimize your inventory per location to ensure stock is on hand in areas of highest demand. You will save on transportation and logistics expenses while improving customer service.