For many brands, fulfillment has long been a back office task that simply does not take top priority. However, as customer expectations increase and there are more challenges that brands must overcome in order to achieve their goals, fulfillment has become increasingly important. In fact, if fulfillment is not a primary focus of your brand, your brand may start to struggle–often more than you expect. For CPG brands, that means making a few essential shifts to ensure that your brand can continue to thrive.
Inventory Visibility Comes First
Inventory often lives in silos: retail stock here, DTC stock there, and marketplaces in the dark about what any of them actually have available. Any time there’s a change in stock needs, inventory may need to be shifted between multiple locations–often without warning. As a result, you can end up with items out of stock, oversells, and missed revenue from items that can’t be sold from their current location.
Navigating Inventory Visibility Requirements
Smart brands centralize inventory tracking and build demand forecasts using real-time order tracking. With everything in one place, it’s easier to tell what items are located where, which ones are selling, and what future needs are likely to look like.
Use a single system to sync inventory across all of your sales channels. Several strategies can help you keep on top of your inventory and customers’ requirements, including:
- Creating safety stock buffers for top SKUs and seasonal spikes
- Building an inventory view by channel for more accurate insights
- Running weekly stock audits to catch variances early, before they become more serious problems
- Setting reorder points based on actual sales trends
In addition, make sure you’re working with fulfillment partners who offer live inventory dashboards. With their help, you can better track your inventory and ensure that you can fulfill your clients’ orders.
Pick/Pack Gets Overlooked—But It’s Where Speed Meets Accuracy
When your business is small, manual pick and pack processes generally work well enough to allow you to get your orders out the door. As your brand grows, however, those manual processes can’t scale–especially when it comes to dealing with multichannel order volumes. That quickly means fulfillment errors, late deliveries, and rising labor costs.
Improving Order Packing
If you want to improve your order packing processes, automate wherever you can–or partner with a fulfillment team that builds efficient, scalable workflows. In the fulfillment center or warehouse, improving your order packing processes might look like:
- Using barcode scanning to reduce packing errors
- Grouping SKUs by popularity to minimize walking time
- Batching similar orders to speed up picking
- Building kitting into the fulfillment plan, rather than adding it in after the fact
- Tracking packing speed and accuracy per shift so that you can get a better idea of how each team is able to function and where they may need additional support
In addition, create a design that allows for a clean, branded unboxing experience. Unboxing is a huge part of customers’ experience with your brand, and you want to make sure it reflects your priorities.
Parcel Strategy Can’t Be an Afterthought
Most CPG brands overspend on parcel shipping without realizing it. They don’t shop around, they may have no idea what deals are available, and they may simply choose the most obvious carrier, rather than considering a mix of different options that will streamline the delivery process and allow for faster overall shipping.
Improving Your Parcel Strategy
Smart brands optimize shipping zones, packaging, and carrier mix to reduce costs. That starts with shipping from multiple regions to stay in Zones 2-5 for shipping: the areas with lower shipping costs, which, therefore, allow for faster fulfillment without stretching your budget. You may also want to:
- Optimize package sizes to reduce dimensional weight fees
- Consolidate retail orders to reduce shipping costs
- Negotiate with your carrier to set your rate tiers based on volume, not a guess at what you might be shipping
Use real-time carrier rate comparisons to get a better idea of what it will cost to ship parcels through a carrier in the moment, rather than getting caught by unexpected rate increases or surcharges. In addition, take a close look at your parcel data, allowing you to identify costly delivery zones and adapt your fulfillment and shipping processes accordingly.
Multichannel Complexity Can Break Your Ops Without the Right Stack
If your system isn’t in alignment across all your channels, juggling retail, DTC, marketplace, and subscription channels creates absolute chaos. It doesn’t take long before stock errors start to pile up, you’re unable to update your customers in a timely manner, and customers have an incredibly poor customer experience.
Creating the Right Stack for Your Operations
Smart brands integrate order and inventory flows with flexible tools–or use fulfillment partners that do. Connect all your order sources through a centralized OMS, rather than keeping them in a variety of separate systems that may or may not integrate well together. Automate channel-specific workflows, including EDI for retail and Shopify for DTC, to streamline as many processes as possible. In addition, you may want to:
- Track fulfillment SLAs by channel to catch potential breakdowns early
- Map returns and replacements into each channel flow so that they go as smoothly as possible
- Build a channel-specific margin view to avoid underpricing, especially when it comes to shipping
For many brands, working with a fulfillment partner is the most effective way to ensure that you can meet those essential requirements and keep up with the data needed to maintain visibility across platforms. Choose a fulfillment provider who offers multichannel integrations so that you can have that visibility.
Your 3PL Should Be a Growth Partner, Not Just a Box Shipper
Many fulfillment partners treat every brand the same. They offer few or no customization options–and that means limited flexibility, reactive service, and missed growth opportunities. Those fulfillment partners are simply focused on getting boxes out the door, rather than on helping your brand grow to its full potential.
Choosing the Right 3PL for Your Brand
Seek partners who understand your business and act like an extension of the team. Your 3PL should be there to help you grow, thrive, and scale as your industry changes, rather than leaving you stuck without the resources you need. When you’re evaluating 3PLs–or deciding if you want to keep your current provider–ask about the vertical-specific experience, whether your focus is CPG, health and beauty, pet items, or something else entirely. Prioritize 3PLs with national warehouse coverage, since they can provide more fulfillment options for your brand. Also, look for teams that offer startup-to-scale flexibility, and vet how they handle custom packaging and kitting to ensure that you are offering your customers a quality experience that reflects your brand.
Once you have selected a 3PL, request regular check-ins and shared performance dashboards. Test their responsiveness before your peak season arrives so that you can feel confident in their management of those seasons.
Fulfillment Isn’t a Cost Center—It’s a Competitive Advantage
Smart fulfillment strategy is no longer optional for multichannel CPG brands. From better inventory tracking to faster pick/pack to smarter shipping, high-growth teams are investing in fulfillment to grow profitably—and protect their brand experience at every step.
Want a fulfillment partner who gets your brand and helps you scale with confidence? Talk to a Symbia expert or check out more resources at symbia.com/resources.
