Order Fulfillment Process: The Critical Component Of Supply Chain Management
The lifeline of every business irrespective of this being a small and medium enterprise or a large business conglomerate is its logistics and supply systems. Every business is bound by the basic process of receiving an order, and delivering the consignment to the buyer. This completes a transaction process. Though it sounds simple, the selling process being different for every enterprise, this order fulfillment process also varies.
Though defined as the process of receiving an order, followed by shipping the order to the buyer to complete a transaction, Order fulfillment involves a more sophisticated movement of products from the manufacturers location to a wide range of customers. With globalization being the key word in every industry segment, order fulfilment service providers needs to ensure that the products picked up from the manufacturer should reach customers at even the farthest corner, irrespective of these being a multinational company or a small homebased business.
Organizations today are increasingly dependent on effective supply chain process to compete in the global market and networked economy. The concept of business relationships extends beyond traditional boundaries, and involves an entire business process of multiple companies within its value network. The growth of multinational companies, joint ventures, strategic alliances and business partnerships have paved way for the evolution of supply chain management. The advent of electronic data interchanges and Enterprise resource planning led way for integration of the supply chain management. Further, globalization of business environment and technological innovations, with its demands gaining a competitive advantage and value-adds have led to the globalization, and outsourcing of the supply chain management systems.
However, order fulfillment process being the core function of the supply chain process of any organization, outsourcing this process to complete fulfilment companies has become the trend in the industry. This helps the client companies to concentrate on their core issues while the fulfillment companies handle the order fulfillment as a turnkey solution with greater competencies and lower costs.
With technological innovations, a number of order fulfillment software have been developed which can be used to control the critical aspect of supply chain management. However, the development of the cloud process based order management systems will not only enable the enterprises to automate and control the order fulfillment flow, but also integrate all the members of the value network to execute business logic. This would provide visibility and clarity throughout the Order Fulfillment process. This web based order fulfillment process scores over the traditional softwares in its centralized, end-to-end visibility and control of picking, processing, packaging, dispatch and transport.
Though defined as the process of receiving an order, followed by shipping the order to the buyer to complete a transaction, Order fulfillment involves a more sophisticated movement of products from the manufacturers location to a wide range of customers. With globalization being the key word in every industry segment, order fulfilment service providers needs to ensure that the products picked up from the manufacturer should reach customers at even the farthest corner, irrespective of these being a multinational company or a small homebased business.
Organizations today are increasingly dependent on effective supply chain process to compete in the global market and networked economy. The concept of business relationships extends beyond traditional boundaries, and involves an entire business process of multiple companies within its value network. The growth of multinational companies, joint ventures, strategic alliances and business partnerships have paved way for the evolution of supply chain management. The advent of electronic data interchanges and Enterprise resource planning led way for integration of the supply chain management. Further, globalization of business environment and technological innovations, with its demands gaining a competitive advantage and value-adds have led to the globalization, and outsourcing of the supply chain management systems.
However, order fulfillment process being the core function of the supply chain process of any organization, outsourcing this process to complete fulfilment companies has become the trend in the industry. This helps the client companies to concentrate on their core issues while the fulfillment companies handle the order fulfillment as a turnkey solution with greater competencies and lower costs.
With technological innovations, a number of order fulfillment software have been developed which can be used to control the critical aspect of supply chain management. However, the development of the cloud process based order management systems will not only enable the enterprises to automate and control the order fulfillment flow, but also integrate all the members of the value network to execute business logic. This would provide visibility and clarity throughout the Order Fulfillment process. This web based order fulfillment process scores over the traditional softwares in its centralized, end-to-end visibility and control of picking, processing, packaging, dispatch and transport.
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