How To Choose An Ecommerce Service Center

Selecting an e-commerce service center is an important decision that can have long term impact on a company's financial objectives, inventory management and customer satisfaction and retention. This is the one crucial decision that directly affects a company's bottom-line and its customer satisfaction efforts.

E-commerce service centers come in different types and each with different options and capabilities. Learning the differences between services offered is important because changing service centers at a later time could be costly and time consuming.

Service center location

An ideal e-commerce service center should be strategically located to customers. Reason for this is to ensure that customers get their orders processed as fast as possible at an affordable rate.

Example, if majority of a company's clients come from Washington, then working with a New York based service center will not offer the business the competitive advantage it needs to be successful, neither will it enable the company provide timely service delivery.

Additionally, if a company's serves both America and Europe, then it's wise to research the possibility of setting up an international service center within Europe, thus enabling the company to effectively compete with overseas merchants.

Ideally, the e-commerce service center should be located near an airport or a shipping facility. The quicker the service center can get the orders processed and shipped via major carriers such as FedEx, UPS or USPS, the faster orders will be delivered to the customers.

Furthermore, the service center location shouldn't be in an area prone to natural disasters or economic turbulence that could disrupt operation.

Technology application in e-commerce service centers

Make sure that the e-commerce service center is technologically competent and capable of handling additional volumes as the company grows. If the firm still relies on manual systems then chances are they may not be able to handle growth explosion in business resulting to delayed orders, this could negatively affect your customer satisfaction and retention efforts.

Question the e-commerce fulfillment center's ability to handle a surge of orders, what their average delay is around the holidays and the technology used on the floor to ensure accuracy. Fulfillment centers that allow for real-time monitoring of inventory through an online portal are optimal.

This allows the business to receive alerts as inventory gets too low, request for additional kitting before selling out and monitor the fulfillment center's daily performance. Ask if the e-commerce fulfillment centers offers real-time reporting and is able to connect to the shopping cart for real-time shipping.

Choosing an E-Commerce Service Center

An e-commerce service center constitutes the largest expense for an online business and this could result to increased operational expenses if a wrong service center is selected. For instance, the costs of transporting inventory to the service center and technology investment to upgrade the service center and link it to the short cart for faster order processing.

Compare the location of the service center, its technological capability and fees before settling on a final center for your needs.