Does an order fulfillment company need to have direct experience with a product in order to do the best job? The answer is, not necessarily. There are many things you should look at when outsourcing fulfillment to a 3rd party fulfillment services provider, and surprisingly, experience with your particular product is not at the top of the list.

You want your order fulfillment company to be good at the nuances of inventory management and picking and packing that characterize your business. It truly doesn’t matter if it’s a toy, a shirt, a handbag, or a marketing/POP graphic. As long as your fulfillment company knows where to find it and how to manage the pick/pack process, they have what it takes.

Here are some of the top order fulfillment considerations: Can the fulfillment company meet your needs whether you have 5 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) or 5000? How about pick/pack orders with 5 line items or 100 line items? Can they pick loose units or cases, or both? Is their expertise in business-to-business fulfillment or direct-to-consumer, or both? Are there rush situations? How well does the fulfillment company react to last minute challenges? Is FIFO (first in first out) required, or is lot control required? Are there returns and how well does the order fulfillment company manage returns?

Now let’s look at reasons to consider specific product experience. You may want your order fulfillment company to be familiar with the retailers you ship to. Some products need special care in pack-out, such as garments on hanger (GOH), or POP/marketing materials and delicate consumer items that could get damaged in transit. Some product types or programs have complex data capture, special processes and specific reporting needs unique to an industry, such as serial number capture and gift card activations. Certainly more complex large scale assembly projects should go to a fulfillment services company that meets the space requirements and has experience in special or complex assembly work like hot melt gluing.

So, think long and hard about whether you want your fulfillment services company to have experience within your industry. It may be important, but it may be more important that the characteristics of your program match the expertise of your 3rd party fulfillment services provider. After considering all the options, you may decide that AMS Fulfillment Services has the order fulfillment experience you need.