10 reasons why outsourcing is an advantage

In general, outsourcing your order fulfillment offers the following advantages.

1. It makes your business inherently scalable.                                                             As your business grows, you don’t have to worry about adding new infrastructure and new inventory controls and equipment. As your shipments increase, it’s simply a matter of increasing the warehouse capacity at your product fulfillment partner.
2. It decreases your order fulfillment time.                                                                Often times, the companies that specialize in order fulfillment have multiple warehouses located across the country. As a result, all shipments to customers no matter where they live typically take only 1-2 business days. In addition, you save on shipping costs because on average, the physical shipping distance is less than if you shipped out of your home location.
3. You can concentrate on marketing and growing your business.                           Maintaining and organizing your own inventory can be a major pain and occupy a significant portion of your time. By allowing a third party to take over, you can focus your efforts on improving your business
4. You can easily expand your business into other countries.                            Making international shipments can be a major pain because there are additional hassles, costs and paperwork involved. By outsourcing your order fulfillment, you no longer have to worry about anything other than sourcing your products

What’s The Catch?

Of course all of this sounds too good to be true so what’s the catch? The main issue with using 3PL services is the cost.

Depending on the number of products you sell, the amount of warehouse space you require and the number of shipments you make in any given month, the cost of the service can span a wide range.

In general, services are ideal if you

• Sell high margin products
• Sell products that occupy very little space
• Sell only a small variety of products

Order fulfillment services  are especially ideal if you are selling products that you’ve created yourself.

If you know that your business is going to scale in the future, it pays to use a service even at the expense of increased profits. As long as you can still make a decent amount of money, why not outsource your headaches and focus on growing your business?