Sungistix: why we love E-commerce Fulfilment

There are many steps involved between receipt of an order and the final delivery of the product to the customer. Tracking inventory, repackaging, labelling, choosing a shipping service and tracking shipment are just few of key steps which need to be planned. These operations consume time and energy which are sparse in today’s business environment. Consider for example, choosing a shipping service. You have multiple shipping services providers with each one specializing in different aspect such as size of shipment, speed of delivery, location of delivery etc. You need to have tie ups with multiple shippers to be able to pick up the right one for each delivery. However, after having this tie up, someone in your organization needs to sit and choose the individual shipping provider for each individual delivery. You can imagine the kind of resources this activity can take. Now extrapolate to other fulfilment activities and you can perhaps visualize the scale and number of decisions that you need to take to ensure that your fulfilment operations are optimized. There is no need to elaborate that leakages in your fulfilment stream impact not only your bottom line, but also your brand perception. Imagine a holiday present reaching the customer after holidays because there was an error in choosing the right shipping provider. On top this, you need to do all this, while you continue to retain focus on marketing and managing your product/s.

This is where a Third-Party Logistics (and fulfilment) service provider such as Sungistix adds value to your e-commerce business. Fulfilment service providers, specialize in optimizing fulfilment processes. As this is their core area of operations, 3PL providers such as Sungistix derive the level of efficiencies that are seldom possible with in-house fulfilment services. Their extended relations with third parties (such as vendors and shippers) and in house capabilities provide e-commerce companies with Value added services which are at best costly to reproduce in house. Let’s quickly look at a few top benefits of partnering with 3PL’s like Sungistix.

Direct to customer, Drop – Ship fulfilment. Today retail customers are very demanding. They want a wide range of products to choose from, at lower costs and with faster delivery. One way to address these requirements is to make heavy investments in inventory and logistics. Another way is to opt for Direct to customer fulfilment, Here the vendor ships directly to your customer. This eliminates the retailers need to maintain inventory at the retailer’s end. It also reduces the transit time of the product and thus also reduces overall cost of the product. However, to work in this model, the retailer’s order must pass quickly to the right vendor, along with all the required packing and shipping details (including any promotional material that should be inserted in the packing) and then get the right shipper to pick up the product and deliver to the customer. This requires a high level of coordination and integration with multiple vendors, transporters and other suppliers in the chain. Managing these networks and integrations and keeping them updated can be a challenge in themselves. A 3PL provider such as Sungistix, provides Electronic data interface as a standard service and can integrate quickly with multiple vendors. Sungistix has existing relationships with multiple shipping providers which can be leveraged by the retailers to minimize their investments and maximize their reach. Sungistix operates on advanced and mature industry standard systems that not only integrate quickly with the systems of other suppliers, but also provide detailed tracking and reporting to the retailers about the status of their shipments and orders.

Multiple shipping service Providers. A good 3PL service provider should have network with multiple shipping service providers. The client should be able to choose the one which suits his needs best and the 3PL provider should then carry out transaction with the chosen shipper for that customer. An efficient 3PL provider would already be integrated with shippers and lets the client choose the shipper on the fly, as per his convenience. Sungistix has existing integrations with popular and well known shipping providers such as FedEx, USPS, UPS etc. It also has existing integration with foreign shippers such as Canadian Post. Retailers can leverage these existing relationships and integrations to choose the shipper that’s most effective for their needs.

Shopping Cart Integration. A 3PL provider should be able to pick up your order, right from where it originates, i.e. the shipping cart. Sungistix provides direct integration with most of the industry standard e-commerce shopping cart solutions. For other custom shopping cart solutions, Sungistix platform can be easily and quickly integrated with them for seamless flow of order details. From there the order is sent to the warehouse, which can also be the one operated by Sungistix, providing a seamless fulfilment experience. The order can also be broken down and sent directly to the vendors for fulfilment. Sungistix systems provide aggregated and detailed reporting for the status of every order received and processed. The systems are also integrated with the systems of shipping service providers to keep the track of the shipment.

Detailed Reporting. One of the issues that many retailers face with outsourcing fulfilment is the reduced visibility of the fulfilment operations. Since the operations are managed by third party, the information available is usually, at best, at the aggregate level. Sungistix provides detailed reporting that can be integrated with retailer’s systems. Information such as top selling SKUs, history of orders sorted by shipping method, shipping costs and other information is available to the clients. The granular data for each order is maintained in our systems and retailers have an interface to customize and aggregate the information as they prefer and that will be presented as a report at set periodic intervals. The retailer gets the maximum visibility into his fulfilment process, even though it is being managed by Sungistix. They can perform their own analytics, if they choose to, and derive the strategic information that’s most important to them.

For such and many other Value added services that Sungistix provides for e-commerce business, please Click here.