Pick and Pack Like a Pro - 8 Ways to Do It Quickly

 

When was the last time you redesigned the pick-pack-ship process of your eCommerce business?

While global online sales are rising constantly, the availability of storage space is shrinking. This has caused warehouse rents to shoot through the roof. Hence, you need to use your storage facility optimally in terms of space utilisation and turning around shipments quickly.

Moreover, 65% of the warehouse costs are associated with labour and 50% of the working hours of storage personnel is spent walking back and forth to pick the orders. This can slow down your shipping process and increase your operational costs.  Pallet Transport from Sydney to Brisbane

If you consider the above data, you would find significant room for process improvement in your pick and pack warehouse.

That said, let’s discuss the nuts and bolts of picking & packing and the ways you can optimise your warehouse operations to pick and pack your customers’ orders quickly.

Overview of the Order Fulfillment Process

As an eCommerce business, right from procuring the products to delivering them to your customers, everything falls under the order fulfilment process. You can handle the entire process in-house or you can outsource it to external logistics providers for better efficiency.

 An eCommerce order fulfilment process comprises five main stages. They are:

Receiving inventory: It’s the first stage when you receive the ordered stock from your suppliers, unload them, sign the receiving documents, and get it into the storage facility.

Warehousing and storage: If you’re managing your inventory in-house, you would store and organise your products category-wise into your own warehouse. In case you have partnered with an end-to-end fulfilment service provider, they’ll stock your inventory in their distributed fulfilment centres for faster deliveries.

Order processing: At this stage, customers order products on your website and you start processing the orders. It starts with the picking and packing process which we’ll discuss in-depth throughout this guide.

Shipping: Once the products are packaged, the next step is shipping them to your customers. Most eCommerce businesses outsource the shipping and delivery process to logistics companies.

Handling returns: Order fulfilment doesn’t end as soon as the customers have their orders in their hands. You also need to proactively plan for reverse logistics in case your consumers want to return or exchange the products.