Fulfillment consulting could be a very broad subject. What is it? Who does it, and how?
Fulfillment consulting is when a company that manufactures a product hires a consultant to offer expert advice and various strategies on how to get a product stored in a warehouse, ordered by customers, and shipped (also referred to as fulfillment and distribution.)
The company would want to find a consultant with expertise in trucking, warehousing, technology, order-taking or shopping cart, packaging, and shipping, and oftentimes a great deal more including location, contracts and so on.
Fulfillment consulting might also include advice on contracting for third party logistics and fulfillment outsourcing, which means that the fulfillment consultant would offer advice on which fulfillment company to hire to do the warehousing and distribution, and possibly also the order-taking, customer service, returns and refurbishment, packaging and packing, and even assembly.
So, companies that manufacture a product can, and often do, hire a consultant to help them find the right eCommerce fulfillment company. But consulting doesn’t end there, and that’s very fortunate for clients that already have chosen a top-notch fulfillment company like AMS Fulfillment.
We do a lot for our clients, but would you believe we also do a great deal of Fulfillment Consulting? With AMS, consulting is done for every single client, as a part of the collaborative relationship established at the outset, in order to determine what works best for the client.
Clients of AMS Fulfillment have a built-in team of experts ready to consult on what, from their extensive experience, will best benefit the client. We provide consulting on everything from 3rd party EDI providers to software systems to transportation solutions to packaging to inventory analysis. Because we handle very diverse clientele, and have done so for years, in the initial consultation with new clients we offer true expertise born of experience.
Client success translates into our success, and that is the standard that AMS has held to from the beginning.
Once you choose AMS as your provider of Fulfillment Services, the collaboration begins. No one could know what’s available in business process outsourcing better than AMS, because we do it every day for those clients that choose our unique brand of highly involved, quality-oriented fulfillment services.
Some of the areas in which AMS provides consultation to its clients include helping our clients find efficiencies in inventory management by analyzing months on hand (MOH) and velocity by stock keeping unit (SKU), and warehousing in a way that keeps the clients’ facility footprint to a minimum, yet also controls the cost of inventory replenishment (restocking floor pick/pack locations).
We are also very proud to offer InSync Operations Analysis, which is our method of maintaining client-specific operating Pro Formas. This provides invaluable insight into operating metrics of the past, present and future.
Order fulfillment and data flow recommendations come standard at AMS, where we work closely with the client to ensure a proper exchange of order and operating data from multiple orders sources (EDI, drop ship sources, shopping carts, retail orders through client ERP) and through multiple eCommerce order fulfillment management systems (client systems / AMS systems).
And there’s a great deal more. We can recommend 3rd party Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) providers. Being fully aware of our clients’ needs, we help them select a provider that will keep them up-to-date and optimized. We recommend 3rd party website shopping carts that will be suitable to the client’s needs. Many clients take advantage of the basic web design that we offer to companies in need of a website.
When a company transitions to AMS, we can recommend expert help in transition planning and project management, we can put our in-house engineers and facility staff to work on warehouse layout and design, and we can refer our clients to the right 3rd party drayage (trucking) companies, customs brokers, printers, corrugate suppliers and so on, to meet their specific needs.
A very important area of our Fulfillment Consulting is the Postage/Freight recommendations we make to our clients based on product weight/dims. AMS has negotiated extraordinary Fed Ex discounts, and we know how to help our clients save. We are often asked to recommend appropriate master carton label design to facilitate faster, more accurate receiving. Factory level labeling or printing on the shipping box is vital, and our expertise also applies to inner carton and individual items.
Fulfillment Consulting is built in to a company like AMS. It is our individual commitment to clients that has brought us great success, and that’s just the kind of uncommon common sense that our clients appreciate.