s picking, boxing, and shipping wasting your valuable time? Have you wondered if you have grown large enough to outsource the tasks involved with fulfillment? Struggling to track and manage shipments?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, we’d like to offer some hope. Plumb Marketing has provided fulfillment services for over 20 years and we have answers to your questions about fulfillment so you can make an educated decision. Today, we will address the most asked question: when is it time to outsource fulfillment services?

When is it Time to Outsource Fulfillment?

This answer depends on a few factors, but really it comes down to time, cost, and space.

Time Spent on Fulfillment Activities:

Start by determining how much time is really being spent on picking, boxing and shipping activities. Use a timer and follow a person doing these tasks from start to finish. Add in any delay times that could add to the process, such as commuting to the post office or waiting in line.

Consider how often items are returned or when shipments need to be replaced. How much time does this take and how often is it happening? Are orders picked incorrectly or is something else causing the returns? Understanding this is important before outsourcing – cleaner processes will help with the transfer of duties (and your profits).

Costs of Fulfillment:

After you have determined the amount of time the process takes, consider the associated costs. For example, if you pay an employee to do those tasks, how much does he earn in wages and benefits? If you are doing them yourself, what is the cost of not doing other, higher-level tasks, such as generating more business?

Other costs will include postage, printing, and supplies, and will increase in relation to your business growing. Knowing these costs will help you compare apples to apples when shopping fulfillment service providers. Too often, business owners only shop this “hard cost” and don’t take into consideration the “soft costs” of their own time spent performing these tasks.

Quality and quality control could also fall in this category. Would outsourcing printing improve the quality of the customer experience? Would it improve your brand identity? How could improving either of these result in more profits?

Space Considerations:

Finally, those businesses doing their own fulfillment will eventually outgrow their space. Storing not only products, but marketing materials, only grows as the business does. Using an outsourced fulfillment center can centralize all your collateral, freeing up space for you to grow your staff, add more equipment, or get your house back!

Learn More about Plumb Marketing Fulfillment Services

Don’t waste precious time on product fulfillment! Plumb has the space, the technology, the staff and proven expertise to be your fulfillment center. From beginning to end, we can handle your drop shipments, product fulfillment, and kit fulfillment so you can focus on your core business tasks. Let us manage orders, shipping, and inventory, while creating a better customer experience in a cost-effective way. Want to learn more? Schedule a demo and get more information here.