5 Signs Your Online Business Needs to Outsource Fulfilment

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Any business owner hopes that they can continue to scale their business to higher and better levels, that they perhaps never thought were truly possible.

However, in order to take your e-commerce business from strength to strength, it’s important that you’re adapting to the growth and making changes where possible to avoid major growth bottlenecks.

For example, outsourcing fulfilment may become a need if you’re struggling to maintain the growth within the resources you have in-house.

With that being said, here are five signs your online business needs to outsource fulfilment this year. 

1. Shipping costs are eroding your profit margins

Smaller brands are often faced with disproportionately higher shipping rates. Those shipping rates, although minor in cost, can also erode your profit margins over time.

That’s why finding a cheaper alternative is essential, so that you can leverage volume-based discounts, which are widely available within strategic warehouse networks. It also helps to reduce the shipping zone distance, which is important when reducing the overall cost per order.

2. Storage space has reached its limit

If storage space has reach it’s limit, then you might want to look at what options are available for free or at a cheap rate. Whether you run a home business or a small one from a random storage unit, when these reach capacity, it can be hard to be productive when you’re losing everything and climbing over boxes and products in general.

This can also lead to errors and delays, which is why using an outsourced fulfillment center is better because it offers scalable storage without the massive overhead costs of having to take on a long-term commercial lease.

3. Fulfilment is distracting from strategic growth

When you spend more time packing boxes and printing labels than on product development or growth, your growth as a business will likely start to stall or decline.

Outsourcing frees up your internal teams, however many that might be, so that you can concentrate on more important tasks.

4. Customer satisfaction is declining due to errors being made

Customer satisfaction can decline due to the errors often made when it comes to growing pains. These growing pains can contribute to late shipments, incorrect items, and poor unboxing experiences.

With negative reviews mentioning shipping delays more than your actual products, this can be damaging to your brand and business. That’s why having a professional fulfilment partner can help restore that accuracy and reliability that you might currently be lacking.

5. Expansion into new markets feels impossible

With fulfilment services outsourced, it can provide you with the opportunity to expand into new markets you didn’t think were possible previously. Scaling internationally is daunting when you’re managing your own logistics. However, when you hand over that responsibility to others, it can make for a much more efficient and cross-border shipping and returns experience. 

These are signs that you shouldn’t be avoiding for the sake of your company’s growth now and in the future.