You have just made the plunge and sent your entire product lineup to a 3PL. You may have SKUs scattered across the country at multiple distribution centers, or perhaps you’ve decided to store your complete inventory list at one centralized location. Setup and integrations are complete, and orders are rolling in like there’s no tomorrow. Now what?

You may be wondering how much day-to-day work there is for you (communication, organization and coordination) in terms of managing your outsourced order fulfillment operations. Should you check your inventory levels on a daily basis? Are you tracking your shipments like a hound? Do you wait to see a “shipped” status on every order and do a happy dance? 

Learning the right balance between constant oversight and none at all is crucial to reaping the benefits of using an outsourced fulfillment services provider. You chose a logistics partner to make your life easier and let you focus your time on growing your business, right? If your 3PL has provided you with the right tools (including a robust software platform that offers insight and transparency into the fulfillment process from end to end), monitoring the process should be a small slice of your workload, not the entire pie. 

 

Outsourcing order fulfillment is a great way to free up time to focus on growing your business. If you are using a trustworthy and top-notch 3PL, you should be able to monitor your orders and inventory in significantly less time than you were spending when you were self-fulfilling or doing it in-house. It should also provide you with the peace of mind that your orders are being fulfilled accurately and on time. Keep inbound shipments, inventory management and returns management on your radar, and you should cruise right along.