Introduction

Introduction

Third Party Fulfilment Specialists (3PLs) play a key role in e-Commerce. OrderFlow has been designed from the ground up to meet the requirements of 3PLs.

This document is aimed at 3PL organisations who are using OrderFlow to meet the fulfilment needs of their clients.

This document aims to provide to provide practical information about

• the most important features on the system that relate to the challenges 3PLs face
• how to build on their own in-house capability, allowing them to service more client requirements without requiring the direct involvement of Realtime Despatch
• how to become more self-sufficient in client 'onboarding', allowing each successive new client to be taken on at lower cost

A big challenge for 3PLs is providing the service their customers expect while keeping costs under control. Having software that is designed to meet this challenge is a start, but this is not all that is required. 3PLs have to be aware of the costs that they are likely to incur when taking on new customers, and understand how they can control these costs. This document provides a framework for doing this, both from a project management and technical point of view.

What Makes 3PLs Different?

3PLs provide warehousing and fufilment services to multiple retailers and other organisations (their clients).

Each client may have different requirements and be associated with multiple sales channels, each with its own integrations, import formats and even courier rules.

For this reason, a 3PL environment will tend to be inherently more complex, and dynamic. Even if individual client configurations are not changing much, the system as a whole will change as new clients get introduced.

3PL Services

Clients expect 3PLs to manage their stock carefully and ship their items promptly according to service level agreements, and to do so in a visible way. For this reason, visibility and reporting are key requirements.

OrderFlow provides for this through a read only user access to the system, and through powerful reporting functionality, from custom reports and dashboards, scheduled reports with automatic notifications, dashboards. Common reporting requirements are met through built-in reports on the key metrics.

3PLs can differentiate themselves through the level of service they provide, by finding the right balance between cost-effectiveness and a 'one size fits all' approach which does not allow them to fully address the needs of their largest, most demanding clients.

A 3PL may vary its offering across its clients in many ways, such as:

• customised paperwork and despatch notes
• modified courier choices or despatch workflows driven by differences in the nature of the products being shipped
• different integration and import data format options
• different reporting and notification options

OrderFlow's 'scoping' feature allows for shared configurations to be easily reused, while configurations that are bespoke to particular clients can easily be applied at an organisation or even channel and site basis.

Billing

3PLs need flexible billing that makes it easy to bill their clients. As with the services provided, a 'one size fits all' won't be appropriate, both in terms of the metrics used, as well as the rates applied to them.

A 3PL needs to be able easily set up custom metrics, and rates on a per client basis, and to generate billing reports which can be used to support invoicing with minimal additional manual intervention.

OrderFlow services this requirements through a billing module which supports monthly or weekly billing.

Customer Onboarding

The other area of major importance to 3PLs is efficient take-on.

The challenge for a 3PL is to be able to cost effectively bring new clients onto the system. For clients who are shipping large volumes, a significant onboarding cost may be acceptable, but for smaller clients, the cost of onboarding may be a key factor in determining whether a client will ever be profitable.

OrderFlow has many built-in features to make taking on new clients as easy as possible for 3PLs.

However, the features on their own are not enough. Just as important is the knowledge transfer that will ensure that in time you (the 3PL) are able to take new clients quickly and cost effectively.

Understanding how this process works is the subject of the next section of this document.