Fulfillment Warehouse Vs. Fulfillment Center

How Can It Help Your Business Grow?

Due to a surge in online businesses during the pandemic, e-commerce is on the rise. Many countries went into lockdown, and in-person shops were closed. Going to a shop and buying products shifted to online shopping where people navigated through a website, ordered the products, and delivered those products to their doorstep. While this was depressing at first that the businesses and shops were shut down, soon the companies adapted new strategies and moved on to eCommerce, which is more efficient and economical. 

Since many online businesses are home-based, they usually store their products in fulfilment centres and warehouses. These two are significantly different from each other, but both of them can help your business grow, increase proficiency, and cut down costs. 

What is a Fulfillment Center? 

A fulfillment center is where a third-party logistics prover operates and fulfills orders from customers for e-commerce retailers. Thus, as the name suggests, a fulfillment center gets online orders to the doorstep of customers in a timely manner, while the e-commerce companies can pay them for this service. The inventory of the e-commerce business is stored in the fulfillment centers, and when there is an order from a customer, the stock is picked and packed and gets ready for shipment. These centers deliver goods to not only consumer orders but also business-to-business (B2B) orders. 

What is a warehouse? 

A fulfillment warehouse is different from a fulfillment center because the warehouse is a place or large building typically where the inventory is stored. For example, if there is an online business that sells car parts, they will store their car parts inventory in the warehouse. Warehousing is ideal when a company has a bulk quantity to store.

How can it help your business grow? 

Whether it is a fulfillment center or a fulfillment warehouse, both of them can contribute to growing your business. 

• Save Time

With a fulfillment center handling the order packaging, processing, and shipment, your new or existing businesses can save time and focus on producing the products. These fulfillment centers are experts at their job and would get the orders packed and shipped to the customers on time. On top of that, you don’t have to worry put picking the right shipment companies, but they will handle everything, allowing you to really focus on marketing, customer service, and products management, hence growing your business. 

• Save Costs 

A fulfillment center and fulfillment warehouse can store your business’s inventory, which means that you only have to pay the rent of the space you use. Since you have a storage facility, you do not have to buy your own place and manage it. You also save costs on hiring and managing staff that will be needed if you have your own storage facility. 

• Automate Warehousing and Fulfillment 

The fulfillment companies use the latest technology to manage their business. This means that the steps of the fulfillment process are documented in real-time for online businesses, and the owner and the customer can see the status of the order online. 

• Fast Delivery 

Fulfillment centers are affiliated with multiple shipping carriers, which means that as soon as an order is received, it gets packed. As the carriers pick up the shipment daily from fulfillment centers, this ensures that the orders are sent to customers faster. 

In conclusion, choose a fulfillment center is to hand over the order fulfillment process to the experts or choose a warehouse to store large quantities of inventory, while you can really focus on the production and marketing.