The Benefits of Using Third-Party Logistics

A fulfillment service is a third-party warehouse that prepares and ships your orders for you. It does this from its fulfillment center. Ecommerce warehouse fulfillment centers are ideal for businesses that don’t want to deal with shipping or have outgrown existing warehousing capabilities to a point where they’re unable to ship orders themselves anymore.

When you hire an outsourced fulfillment services provider, not only do you get warehouse space, you also get people responsible for running the fulfillment center. When you fulfill and ship your own orders, you’ll likely need to hire staff as you scale.

Managing staff takes time. If your business is still in flux, you may be wary of promising someone a job. Instead, you can outsource the work to a logistics company and let them be responsible for finding and hiring good people.

Each 3PL has a whole team of logistics experts and support staff who are there to help you along the way. They manage all of the labor needed for receiving, inventory management, and order processing and shipping—giving you a new level of agility you might not achieve so easily on your own.

Partnering with a 3PL for outsourced fulfillment services, you can benefit from their efficiencies and leverage their buying power on packaging and shipping costs. Some even share real-time stock levels and status updates so you can be proactive.