If you own an e-commerce business, order fulfillment is an essential part of your day-to-day operations and this means that you will need to deal with 3pl distribution. Especially as your company grows you will discover that fulfilling customer orders in-house is no longer a viable option, so you will need to expand your fulfillment strategy at this point, which for many companies means outsourcing fulfillment to a third party logistics company (3PL) i.e. Using 3pl distribution, and in this article we will show you all the details you need to know about 3pl distribution, its benefits, and its role.
What is 3PL distribution?
3pl distribution means use the distribution of external sources for logistical operations in ecommerce.
Through which customer requests are addressed and implemented and then shipped to a logistical company belonging to an external authority. Such as:
- Inventory Management.
- Shipping and receiving.
- Equipment and customization.
- Storage.
- Selection and mobilization.
- Reverse logistical services (returns).
The Benefits of Strategic 3PL Distribution
The benefits of using 3pl distribution are manifold, and it will clearly benefit your business as it will give you a better chance to grow in the market and focus on other more important tasks.
Here are a number of points that explain the benefits of the strategic 3pl distribution in some detail:
1. Reduce costs for your organization
Companies that provide 3pl distribution services will help you reduce the percentage of expenses that they incur, because these companies are by nature highly specialized in the field.
They therefore have a more comprehensive network than your company’s supply chain function, i.e. they have exclusive relationships within the logistics sector.
This means that their influence in negotiations and getting discounts is much greater than what you can do on your own, thus helping you reduce a lot of costs.
2. Helping you grow and reduce delays
The companies that provide 3pl distribution services have enough experience and expertise that can help you grow and significantly reduce delays.
Through its practical experience in matters related to transport, import and export documents, international compliance and economic regulations, thus helping you to expand locally and internationally easily.
By utilizing the logistical support and knowledge your third party partner can provide, this will impact the reduction of delays and turnaround time.
3. Focus on the core competencies of your organization
3pl distribution service providers will give your organization the opportunity to focus on its core competencies rather than getting involved in managing non-core functions related to logistics.
4. Flexibility and market scalability
The advantage of third-party logistics is that it provides organizations with the flexibility and scalability to use supply and distribution resources based on current business needs.
Thus when sales are low, there are no redundant investments and unused resources.
And when there is an increase in demand, organizations can scale up and cover that increase easily and quickly.
5. Enable business growth and market expansion
The role of 3pl distribution service providers is to enable business growth by giving companies access to markets where they do not have a fixed presence.
In addition, it manages inventory in a new market without spending money on warehousing, equipment and labor.
6. Significantly improve customer satisfaction
Relying on 3pl distribution services will improve services, response time, and timely delivery.
Thus, increasing brand reliability, and this translates into customer satisfaction, which is a primary goal for all companies.
What role do fulfillment centers play in logistics?
The fulfillment center is no different from the 3pl distribution, as both are essentially a form of fulfillment centers and the execution of orders in e-commerce.
Fulfillment centers are an important part of the supply chain, which represents the main hub of all logistics operations that take place until the completion of the order fulfillment process, starting from the selection of orders to shipping and delivery options to the customer.
So fulfillment centers are warehouses that are designed and used in order to fulfill e-commerce orders, so that orders are prepared and then fulfilled for customers.
Fulfillment centers play an important role in e-commerce and logistics services in general, through which the orders that customers need are executed quickly and accurately.
And professional Distribution centers are those that are able to implement orders accurately and quickly.
So that they meet the expectations of customers and achieve their satisfaction with the services provided.
Therefore, these centers play a large role in logistics services, as they help in inventory control and shipping items quickly and accurately.
As well as performing other functions such as packaging, solving shipping problems and many more..
Why do companies choose to work with a 3PL provider?
Many companies have started preferring to deal with third-party service providers 3pl to take advantage of the huge services provided by such parties.
The most important of which is to improve the services provided and fulfill customer requests, reduce response time and work on timely delivery, thus increasing the brand’s reliability.
Diggipacks can help you provide the best in logistics, which can help you run your business efficiently.
Especially as it is one of the first companies that designed a smart system to deal with all customer problems, and it also solved through its smart systems the problems of customers who were suffering from poor storage and delivery.
Diggipacks has succeeded in finding integrated solutions to suit the region, and the following are the most important features of Diggipacks in providing logistics services:
- Receiving products, where Diggipacks has a special system for receiving shipments and storing them in its warehouses, and providing all updates through the customer control panel or the customer application
- Shipping and delivery, Diggipacks systems are connected with all shipping companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for more than 30 companies.
- Using artificial intelligence to distribute shipments to shipping companies and perform all functions.
- Choosing the best performing shipping and delivery company automatically to raise the quality efficiency of each customer and improve his reputation in the market.
- Providing all the spaces needed by customers’ products with an economical plan.
- Guarantee of high quality storage with complete packaging.
- Provide daily reports of your stock movement through the customer control panel.
- Providing all linking tools by programming add-ons and modules for most e-commerce sites.
- Design strong systems that do not allow the return of any shipment without your consent or for a valid reason such as refusal or failure to respond to our communications.
- Providing more than 10,000 square meters of space to store customers’ products, whether they are for regular stock or heavy stock.
- Providing logistical support, an integrated logistical solution, importing and customs clearance of products and preparing them for distribution
- The ability to store products safely and with the best standards of storage, whether they are refrigerated or regular products.
- Manage shipments with ease using the customer control panel.
