Finding the right fulfillment company is a business decision with huge ramifications. Excellent eCommerce fulfillment can be a springboard to success, but inadequate third-party logistics can drag your business down. Finding a 3PL that works well with your eCommerce platforms is an essential piece of the puzzle. So, finding the best CommerceHub fulfillment company is critical if that’s the software that powers your eCommerce enterprise. This article outlines considerations to keep top of mind when choosing a CommerceHub fulfillment company.
What fulfillment services do CommerceHub users need?
CommerceHub is the go-to software for sellers whose sales channels include drop shipping for orders placed through large retailers such as Target or Walmart. You need a fulfillment partner that can handle drop shipping, adhere to each partner’s sourcing fulfillment services requirements, and ship D2C orders placed on your website and other sales platforms. If your business includes wholesale, you need your 3PL to process bulk orders and ship via LTL or FTL freight.
And, of course, you need to work with a warehouse that can integrate seamlessly with CommerceHub, so information flows in both directions. The quality of your logistics depends as much on the tech that powers it as it does on the physical movement of goods. CommerceHub is a powerful platform, allowing you to manage all your sales channels and fulfillment operations in one place. You need a 3PL capable of taking full advantage of CommerceHub features to power your fulfillment operations.
Elements of excellent CommerceHub order fulfillment
In your search for a CommerceHub fulfillment company, it’s critical to ask each potential 3PL about its capabilities. Here are four core fulfillment competencies that you need as a CommerceHub user. Use our fulfillment company questionnaire for more detailed suggestions of what to ask to ensure you get the fulfillment services you need.
Fully integrated web services
In most cases, it’s best to choose a fulfillment company with CommerceHub integrations experience. Your integration will go more smoothly with a 3PL that understands what’s needed for a seamless CommerceHub connection.
As an example, Red Stag Fulfillment has two options for CommerceHub fulfillment. Clients can connect to our warehouse management system through middleware or API. Middleware has the advantage of a quick connection with low upfront costs. On the other hand, an API gives you more options for custom integration and faster data exchange. It takes time to build out an API, and there’s a cost for the initial coding, but it can be more cost-effective in the long term because you don’t have monthly fees for middleware.
Multi-channel order fulfillment
As noted above, a CommerceHub fulfillment company needs to accommodate the requirements of all your sales channels. That could mean processing drop shipped orders for major retailers, Shopify fulfillment, shipping Amazon orders, and even wholesale shipments. Make sure your 3PL can follow your SOPs, so orders from each sales channel are picked and packed according to your requirements.
Short customer order cycle times
Customers demand fast delivery, and fulfillment is the ideal place to start. Simply by shortening the time between when a customer places an order and when it leaves the fulfillment warehouse, you can take a day or more off your customer order cycle time.
At Red Stag Fulfillment, we provide fast delivery by offering same-day fulfillment services. Same-day fulfillment means that any order received before the service level cutoff time is guaranteed to ship the same day. With a CommerceHub integration that instantly delivers orders to your 3PL, your customers get their orders quicker.
Inventory visibility
Skillful inventory management is a pillar of your eCommerce success. But you can’t schedule your purchase orders or set realistic safety stock levels if you don’t have an accurate picture of inventory movement into and out of the fulfillment warehouse. Your 3PL should give you inventory visibility through your CommerceHub connection, so you always know what you have in stock. Pro tip: An API connection will give you faster inventory visibility than a middleware connection.
A crucial element of inventory visibility is inventory accuracy. Shrinkage can throw off your counts and skew your demand forecasting. Red Stag Fulfillment had 99.991% inventory accuracy in 2021, so our clients always know where their products are.
How to identify the best CommerceHub fulfillment company for your business
In addition to core services, your CommerceHub fulfillment company should support your business and its ongoing expansion. Here are five hallmarks of excellent CommerceHub fulfillment services.
Fast onboarding
As your business matures, you may need to switch fulfillment companies as you outgrow your initial 3PL or move from in-house order handling to outsourced fulfillment. The onboarding process is akin to changing planes in midair. You need to get everything set up at your new warehouse, but you can’t afford to pause your online sales while you do it.
That’s why Red Stag Fulfillment created a dedicated team to assist with onboarding. Our specialists help you through all the steps needed to get your fulfillment up and running smoothly so you don’t lose a single order.
Integration support
Most of the work of integration happens during onboarding, but you may want to update your API as your business needs change. Red Stag Fulfillment supports your business growth with ongoing integration support whenever you need it.
The latest e-commerce technologies
CommerceHub fulfillment requires a 3PL that’s in step with the latest innovations and trends in eCommerce fulfillment. The entrepreneurs who founded Red Stag Fulfillment had a vision of what outstanding logistics services could provide for online sellers. We keep pushing boundaries through a process of constant improvement and by placing e-commerce technologies at the center of our business model.
Warehouse locations
The key to warehouse locations for CommerceHub fulfillment is getting the right number and the ideal sites. You want to use enough fulfillment centers to allow you to ship to most of your customers within a few days. However, you don’t want to use so many different warehouses that your inventory is spread too thin, increasing your carrying costs.
Red Stag Fulfillment can ship to 95% of U.S. addresses in two days or less from two warehouse locations. That allows our clients to simplify their inventory management without sacrificing fast delivery.
Experience with products like yours
A fulfillment company that knows how to handle your orders is a critical factor online businesses sometimes overlook when sourcing fulfillment services. At Red Stag Fulfillment, we specialize in bulky, heavy, and high-value products. We’ve had clients whose oversized items got damaged in other warehouses because the 3PL wasn’t equipped to manage heavy products.
If your business has a high volume of sales of small products, you should choose a warehouse with systems to track and ship items like yours so your inventory doesn’t get lost or damaged. We achieve that by performing multiple checks and scans before any order goes out the door. A best practice is to determine the weight and contents of a standard order that the 3PL ships and see how well it matches your most common shipment.
Why top online brands choose Red Stag Fulfillment as their CommerceHub fulfillment company
Red Stag Fulfillment is more than a 3PL. We are entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs, a growing company whose growth is tied to the success of our clients. Brands that choose Red Stag as their CommerceHub fulfillment company, or fulfillment for another platform, have seen the power of top-notch fulfillment services to add velocity to their business expansions.
At RSF, we spend all day thinking of ways to serve our clients better. If that’s the kind of fulfillment service your business needs right now, give us a call.
More about integrations and fulfillment:
- Netsuite Order Fulfillment
- Best SPS Commerce Order Fulfillment
- Tips for Faster Onboarding When You Switch Fulfillment Companies
