Is Your Order Fulfillment Process a Cat?

by Chelsea Camper | Last Updated December 30, 2015

It is said that dogs have masters and cats have slaves; dogs work hard for their owners while cat owners work hard for the cats. This same idea can be geared toward your order fulfillment process. Is your order fulfillment process working to help make your life easier or are you working harder to keep your order fulfillment process working than it’s working for you?

Order fulfillment starts from the time the customer places their order to the time they receive the order. It encompasses every step from creating the packing list to putting the shipping label on the packing list. Below you’ll find a series of ten questions and explanations to help you determine if your order fulfillment process is a cat. At the end use the number of Cat Points you rack up to find out if your fulfillment process is a cat or a dog (or a cat-dog!).

is your order fulfillment process a cat

1. Is order information automatically sent to a program from which you can access billing and shipping information in QuickBooks and print shipping labels?

When order information has to be manually transferred from the online shopping cart to the packing list and shipping label you open up a wide window for transposition errors. Just switching up two numbers in a zip code can cause the package to be returned as undeliverable. You’re then stuck with the cost of returning the label to your warehouse, printing a new shipping label, and resending it as quickly as possible to the correct customer address.

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

2. Do your pickers have to spend time matching up packing lists and shipping labels?

This is one of those places where you’re wasting valuable order fulfillment time! Don’t make your pickers and packers waste time by trying to match up the picking lists with the correct shipping labels. Keep the shipping label and packing list on the same sheet of paper so that there’s not hunting around for the right shipping label for each picked package.

Yes: 1 Cat Point

No: 0 Cat Points

 

3. Do you have a program to combine the shipping label, packing slip, and other shipping forms onto one sheet?

Collating your shipping forms helps to keep your order fulfillment process organized. By having all your shipping forms (or at least most of them) on a single sheet, you can reduce errors from forms getting mixed up. While some label sheets only have a single perforation, other label sheets have multiple perforations to keep shipping forms on a single sheet. With the extra perforations, the shipping forms can be easily detached from each other.

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

4. Can you easily notify customers of their order status?

If a customer calls to ask when they will receive their order, can you quickly and easily pull up the fulfillment status of their order to give them an ETA? Your customers like to be in the know of what’s going on with the products they’ve ordered from you (and in many cases, have already paid for).

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

5. Can you easily maintain product inventory numbers?

If you start off the day with 500 green size 20 widgets and someone orders 50 of them, is it easy for you to change your inventory size from 500 to 50? If your fulfillment process does that automatically, then all the better!

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

6. Does your fulfillment system automatically notify the customer that their order has shipped?

For those sending out hundreds or even thousands of orders a day it is simply impossible for you to get out an email to every one of your customers when their order ships manually unless you have a whole fleet of people at the ready to send out those emails. By having a fulfillment process that automatically notifies customers when their order has shipped can really help get your fulfillment process working for you.

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

7. Is your fulfillment process flexible? Meaning it easily works with at least 99% of the products you offer.

You might have one oddball product that requires special care, but for the rest of your stock, your order fulfillment process should be able to work with it flawlessly. There shouldn’t be a reason for your process to work with blue widgets but not pink ones. It should be able to work for 99% of your inventory at the very least.

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

8. Does your fulfillment process require you to use tape to affix the shipping label onto the package?

Are your packers and shippers having to tape the shipping label onto the package? There are several reasons you should not tape a shipping label onto the package, one of which being that tape over the barcode can interfere with scan and cause the package to be undeliverable. Use a self adhesive shipping label instead of taping it on.

Yes: 1 Cat Point (This should really be worth 10 Cat points!)

No: 0 Cat Points

 

9. Are your customers happy with the speed and accuracy of their orders?

Talk to your Customer Service staff to see if they’re getting any complaints about the way their packages are arriving. Is it fast enough? Were all the items included? Did you spell their name right?

Don’t forget to ask your customers how they think you’re doing. More often than not you’ll hear the bad stuff quickly (like a missing item from an order) but you won’t hear the praise until you ask how the customer felt about the service.

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

10. Can orders be easily placed into the fulfillment system via online orders, phone calls, etc.?

Some companies take orders only via online forms, but most have multiple ways of collecting orders. If you get a phone order, is it easy to put that order into the order fulfillment process? Can you quickly add a faxed order to the process without fuss?

Yes: 0 Cat Points

No: 1 Cat Point

 

 

Talley your points up to find out whether your order fulfillment process is a cat or a dog!

0-3 Congratulations, your order fulfillment process is a dog! It happily works hard for you making your life a little easier.

4-6 Awesome, you’re the proud owner of a strange, cat-dog biological mix up of an order fulfillment process. With a few tweaks you might just be able to get the cat out of your process!

7-10 Hmm, seems like you’re working hard for your order fulfillment cat. There are a few ways you can improve and streamline your order fulfillment process so that it works harder for you (and you work less for it!).

 

Here are some suggestions for those with cat-dogs and cat order fulfillment processes:

  • Check out our Order Fulfillment Series for tips on simplifying your order fulfillment process
  • Start using shipping label sheets instead of taping on shipping labels
  • Take a look at the Shipping Tips section of the blog for…well, shipping tips
  • Start designing your own shipping label to help your unique order fulfillment process
    Click me

 

How did your order fulfillment process score?

 

Image: photofarmer