Pick and Pack – how does it work?
Pick and pack fulfilment in the print industry is the process of picking multiple previously printed items and collating them into a specific pack. These items are then dispatched to the customer’s required destination. It entails processing small to large quantities of products, picking the relevant products for each destination and packaging with a shipping label.
A typical solution would also include obtaining competitive prices for shipping, from normal as well as expedited transport services. You would also expect an effective Pick and Pack service to operate an effective warehouse management system to create the optimal pick paths.
If your business is short on space and manpower and you have a daily or weekly requirement to dispatch printed materials to your clients you could be spending valuable man hours fulfilling orders to your customers. What you need is an external pick and pack fulfilment service. Justifying the decision that you need a fulfilment service is easy, what’s hard is choosing a pick and pack fulfilment service that’s right for your business.
Why You Would Want to Use a Pick and Pack Fulilment Service
An efficient pick and pack process isn’t an easy feat to create. Stock must be on hand, organised and also fully accounted for. This is typically managed through our online stock management system which enables us to report accurate product counts and storage locations in real time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. It can also be pre-configured to create automatic restock orders once minimum safe quantity markers are triggered.
If your company has 50-100+ requests a day or week, fulfilment can become a daunting task. It can consume too many man hours and be prone to mistakes which can cost you customers. At this level and beyond, most companies would use a pick and pack fulfilment service. Our outsourced fulfilment services can take care of this entire process for you. At Cliffe Enterprise print management we can organise the printing of the stock items, the safe storage of said items as well as any additional items you may have in stock already. We can then manage the required pick and pack of your orders and organise the onward transportation using our strategic logistic partners or, if preferred, we can use your own transport contacts.
Using our pick and pack fulfilment services allows you to:
• Ship items quicker
• Free up time that can be spent on other administrative tasks
• Avoid costly mistakes when shipping orders
• Provide a better customer experience
• Handle more orders as your business grows
Choosing a Pick and Pack Fulfilment Service
There are many different pick and pack services to choose from. To save you some time, here’s our checklist for choosing a pick and pack service that actually works for your business.
Provided Services
Firstly you need to understand what services they provide. At the very least, they should provide basic pick, pack and shipping capabilities. Depending on your business needs however, you might need more. Do you need to ship different items together in a certain way? Can the service process returns for you? If you ship internationally, you’ll need to make sure that the provider handles international orders. Define what your specific needs are and see how each fulfilment provider meets those needs.
Support
Ask each service provider what support they offer. In the case that there is a problem with an order, who can you call to fix it? You need to be able to fix any problems quickly. Having a dedicated account manager at the fulfilment centre helps to provide you with prompt answers and solutions. Make sure that customer support is a priority of the pick and pack service you choose.
Shipping Confirmation
When working with an external service, you need to feel confident in how they communicate with you. Choose a service that will provide you with shipping confirmation and tracking numbers. This type of communication helps you manage your business. It gives you the confidence that your item has arrived with the customer in a timely manner.
Pricing
Most pick and pack services have pricing terms based on the amount of stock storage space required, packaging required, order handling and shipping costs. As each individual solution will have its own specific requirements, it is impossible to try and provide any form of approximate costs in this blog, however call Cliffe Enterprise now on 01323 419701 and ask to speak to our team about your pick and pack needs. Or email us on sales@cliffe-enterprise.com.
At Cliffe Enterprise print management we strive to engineer and deliver an optimal, cost effective and time efficient pick and pack solution to meet your exacting needs.