Common Fulfilment Mistakes & How to Avoid Them When Scaling Your Business
01/04/2025 | Share:
Scaling your e-commerce business is an exciting step, but as order volumes grow, the fulfilment process can become a major challenge. Many businesses struggle with inefficiencies, excessive shipping costs, and operational issues that negatively impact customer satisfaction and profit margins. In this blog, we’ll explore some of the most common fulfilment mistakes businesses encounter when scaling and how to avoid them.
1. Poor Inventory Management
As your business grows, so does your inventory. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is failing to optimise stock levels, leading to either stock outs or excessive inventory. Poor inventory management results in lost sales, excessive storage costs, and unhappy customers who experience delays in receiving their orders.
How to Avoid It:
- Implement an inventory management system to track inventory items and stock levels in real time.
- Use demand forecasting to predict inventory needs based on sales channels and tracking data.
- Establish reorder points to prevent stock outs and ensure customers receive their customer purchases on time.
- Invest in automated inventory tracking to reduce manual errors and provide real-time visibility into stock movements.
2. Overlooking Warehouse Space & Organisation
As order volumes increase, an inefficient warehouse layout and poor packaging choices can lead to shipping delays and unhappy customers. A cluttered warehouse makes it difficult to fulfil orders quickly, leading to inefficiencies and higher costs.
How to Avoid It:
- Organise your warehouse with logical picking routes to minimise time spent retrieving products.
- Use barcode scanners and automated systems to reduce human errors.
- Invest in a warehouse management system for better supply chain efficiency.
- Ensure stock is categorised and stored in a way that speeds up order fulfilment, such as batch picking for frequently ordered items.
3. Choosing the Wrong Shipping Partners
Many businesses fail to properly vet shipping carriers, leading to excessive shipping costs and poor delivery times. The wrong shipping strategy can result in delayed deliveries, unhappy customers, and negative reviews that hurt your business’s reputation.
How to Avoid It:
- Partner with multiple shipping partners to offer cost-effective and timely delivery.
- Negotiate shipping rates based on volume to maximise cost savings.
- Implement tracking numbers for transparency and a better customer experience.
- Regularly review shipping performance metrics to ensure timely deliveries and minimal delays.
- Offer multiple delivery options, including next-day delivery, to meet varying customer expectations.
4. Ignoring the Returns Process
A poor returns process can lead to negative reviews and lost customer loyalty. In today’s digital age, customers expect a hassle-free return experience, and businesses that fail to meet these expectations risk losing repeat purchases.
How to Avoid It:
- Offer a clear and customer-friendly returns policy.
- Automate returns processing with an integrated order management system.
- Use tracking data to identify frequent return issues and improve packaging design.
- Provide free return labels where possible to encourage repeat purchases.
- Ensure returned items are quickly restocked to maintain accurate stock levels.
5. Underestimating the Cost of Order Fulfilment
As your business scales, fulfilment costs, including additional costs like labour and storage, can reduce profit margins. Many businesses fail to properly calculate fulfilment expenses, leading to financial losses.
How to Avoid It:
- Analyse all costs, including storage, packaging, shipping orders, and warehouse space.
- Consider outsourcing to a third-party logistics provider for cost-effective solutions.
- Use data to identify cost-saving opportunities like bulk shipping and supply chain optimisation.
- Implement cost-effective packaging solutions that balance product protection with minimal material usage.
6. Failing to Adapt to New Sales Channels
Expanding to new online retailers and sales channels can increase revenue, but failing to integrate them properly can cause fulfilment mistakes. Managing multiple platforms manually can lead to human errors, delayed order processing, and inconsistent stock levels.
How to Avoid It:
- Use an integrated order management system to consolidate customer orders from multiple platforms.
- Ensure stock levels are synced in real time to prevent overselling.
- Optimise fulfilment strategies for different sales channels.
- Regularly audit sales channel performance to adjust inventory allocation accordingly.
7. Not Planning for Seasonal Spikes
Many e-commerce businesses struggle to handle high order volumes during peak seasons like Black Friday, leading to delivery delays and customer dissatisfaction. The inability to handle seasonal demand can result in negative reviews and lost revenue.
How to Avoid It:
- Plan inventory and staffing levels ahead of time for peak periods.
- Work with a fulfilment partner that can scale with demand.
- Encourage repeat purchases by offering early shopping incentives.
- Implement a flexible staffing strategy with temporary workers during peak seasons to handle increased demand.
8. Not Hiring the Right Team or Automating Processes
As your business grows, relying on a small, overstretched team using manual tracking can lead to common mistakes in fulfilment. Without the right team and automated processes, fulfilling orders efficiently becomes an uphill battle.
How to Avoid It:
- Hire and train employees to manage increased fulfilment demand.
- Implement barcode scanning and fulfilment automation to reduce human errors.
- If fulfilment becomes too complex, consider outsourcing to a third-party logistics provider.
- Continuously train employees on best practices to improve efficiency and minimise errors.
9. Inconsistent Customer Communication
Customers expect real-time updates on their orders. Poor communication regarding shipping delays, tracking numbers, or order status can lead to unhappy customers and damage your brand’s reputation.
How to Avoid It:
- Provide automated email or SMS updates with tracking numbers and estimated delivery times.
- Ensure customer service teams are responsive and trained to handle fulfilment-related queries.
- Use an integrated system to update customers on order progress in real time.
Final Thoughts
Scaling your fulfilment operations is crucial to maintaining a positive business reputation and meeting customer expectations. By addressing these common fulfilment mistakes and improving your fulfilment process, you can increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and improve profit margins.
Are you struggling with fulfilment challenges while scaling? Contact Ogden Fulfilment today to find out how we can help streamline your operations and support your business’s growth.
