Brands must now sell everywhere, including websites, major marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart, brick-and-mortar stores and social media. However, fulfillment is often a complete mess behind the scenes with inventory trapped in silos and systems not communicating with one another. This can result in the quality of the customer experience suffering across sales channels. What appears to be a strong omnichannel strategy is often supported by manually recorded spreadsheets, guesswork and overworked and stressed teams.
This guide was created for brands that are serious about their omnichannel fulfillment strategy. We will define omnichannel fulfillment and provide a five-step roadmap for overcoming the most common roadblocks to your efforts. Cart.com will also demonstrate how it brings the entire strategy together through integrated systems, unified inventory management and a scalable infrastructure that can grow alongside your brand.
What is omnichannel fulfillment?
Omnichannel fulfillment is fundamentally about shipping from multiple places. However, it is also about creating a connected inventory and fulfillment network that supports high-quality and consistent customer experiences across sales channels.
To achieve this, brands must give every platform, from their D2C websites to third-party marketplaces, real-time access to their inventory. It also involves enabling your customers to choose how they receive their orders, whether shipping to home, picking up in-store or buying online and returning in-store. Most importantly, it means coordinating your backend operations in a way that results in fast, accurate and consistent fulfillment experiences.
Omnichannel fulfillment depends on three major foundational elements: unified inventory visibility, integrated order management and a fulfillment network that can scale and adapt to increased demand. Without these three components, brands will inevitably revert to relying on disjointed systems and reactionary decisions.
A framework for building an omnichannel fulfillment strategy
Creating an omnichannel strategy is a comprehensive process that takes time. It will require a phased implementation that aligns systems, processes and teams effectively. We’ve suggested a five-step process that you can follow to build a foundation for success.
1. Audit your current fulfillment processes
Evaluate how your fulfillment processes are managed and deployed across all sales channels. This is necessary to identify areas of improvement including where data silos exist, where handoffs occur and which processes are slow and result in bottlenecks. Also identify your current fulfillment partners, systems, tools and warehouse locations.
2. Centralize data
This process is necessary to ensure your fulfillment centers and sales channels all have access to the same live data. This will involve integrating storefronts, marketplaces and backend systems so that all channels can draw from the same centralized data. Completing this step is necessary to ensure real-time inventory accuracy.
3. Ensure fulfillment meets customer expectations
This step will involve developing a fulfillment strategy that meets your customers' needs. How do your customers shop and expect to receive products? Do they want next-day delivery, in-store pickup or shipping across regions? You need to ensure your fulfillment operations are designed to meet customer expectations.
4. Automate workflows
Eliminating time-consuming manual processes is necessary whenever possible. Automate routing rules, inventory updates, shipping label generation and notifications. Further, ensure that your order management system communicates with your warehouse, shipping and sales platforms around the clock.
5. Monitor performance and optimize
Tracking metrics like fulfillment speed, order accuracy, returns and channel-specific delivery is a recipe for success. Use metrics and benchmarks to improve your efforts, and expand strategically and proactively to resolve issues before they lead to disruptions in operations and a loss of customer trust.
Common challenges
Many brands attempt to deploy an omnichannel fulfillment strategy and encounter significant challenges along the way. The most common causes of failure include the following:
- Channel silos: This is a common problem when each platform or fulfillment partner has its own inventory pool. Visibility will break down and overselling will become a problem.
- Inconsistent customer experiences: When you’re operating with disjointed systems and data silos, it becomes more probable that your customers will receive inconsistent or confusing updates and experience delays in delivery and returns.
- Diminished efficiency levels: Your teams will burn time attempting to reconcile data, reroute orders and adjust inventory manually. These inefficiencies will increase as sales volume grows.
- Inability to scale: If your fulfillment operations and inventory systems are not built to support flexibility and growth, you will encounter significant challenges when demand fluctuates.
Overcoming and avoiding these challenges will require the right technology, a connected strategy, appropriate infrastructure and in many cases an experienced 3PL provider who has the experience and infrastructure needed to help brands scale without disruptions and reductions in service quality.
Cart.com’s omnichannel fulfillment solutions
Our omnichannel fulfillment solutions are customized to help brands overcome the most common challenges involved in selling across multiple channels. We have the technology and infrastructure our clients need to integrate systems, optimize sales channels and work together to ensure high-quality customer experiences.
Our omnichannel solutions are capable of:
- Centralizing inventory across all sales channels and fulfillment nodes
- Automating order routing and fulfillment processes
- Scaling operations easily into new channels and regions
- Improving fulfillment speed, accuracy and customer satisfaction
When you choose to work with us, you can forget about fragmented systems and time-consuming manual processes. We deliver fully integrated solutions that align with your brand’s vision for the future. You’ll gain access to the infrastructure, tools, expertise and support needed to eliminate inefficiencies and disruptions that diminish customer satisfaction and trust.
Choose Cart.com for optimal results
An omnichannel fulfillment strategy can lay the foundation for operational success in competitive markets. However, without a clear deployment strategy, unified systems and infrastructure, brands can continue to experience high costs, inefficiencies, missed opportunities and diminished levels of customer satisfaction. The good news is that you have access to tried and tested solutions to provide improved results.
If you’re struggling to deploy an omnichannel fulfillment strategy, partnering with an omnichannel expert can make all the difference. Considering an omnichannel fulfillment strategy? We can help. Contact us today.
