What is E-fulfillment?

E-fulfillment is a term that is increasingly used in connection with e-commerce. The general buying behaviour has changed fundamentally in recent years and many e-commerce retailers are enjoying enormal growth rates. But with the increased trading volumes, the demands of customers on the Internet are also rising. While they used to be satisfied with delivery times of a few days, some are now already beginning to feel impatient after 48 hours. "Same day delivery", i.e. delivery on the day of order, or even delivery in a delivery window determined by the buyer, is just as little a rarity today as more and more personalization, cross-multi- and omnichannel distribution and high flexibility for returns.

To meet all these customer demands on their own costs online shop operators a lot of power, resources, time and ultimately money. Therefore they use themselves ever more frequently E-fulfillment service provider - but what exactly is e-fulfillment? E-fulfillment is actually partial or complete outsourcing, i.e. the outsourcing of e-commerce processes in order to deliver your goods to online customers so quickly, reliably and cost-effectively. E-fulfillment service providers adapt their services, which take place after placing an online order, completely to the needs and requirements of the online shop. Because these tasks are complex matters that shop operators do not outsource to professionals without good reason. Of course, this is not possible without precise consultation and regular communication.

Smooth processes thanks to outsourcing

E-fulfillment costs money. However worth it for online merchants and offers them the advantage that they can rely on a service provider with experience, know-how and infrastructure and can concentrate on their own core business. This ultimately allows them to efficiently utilize their freed up human and operational resources, save time and money, and offer the customer the best possible shopping experience. This creates customer loyalty and loyalty and secures medium to long-term sales.

Even if professional E Fulfillment is more than just logistics, this area takes up a considerable part of the Fulfillment activities. What is the biggest challenge for online shop operators here, is part of everyday life for e-commerce fulfillment services. In addition to commercial processes such as order acceptance, invoicing, dunning or other services, the main focus here is on storage and order-picking of goods, transport and delivery as well as returns processing. To ensure that all this functions smoothly, the e-fulfillment service provider has the necessary data at its disposal: Product prices, weight, size, type of packaging and so on and thanks to interfaces ensures that the customer can only order the goods that are available.