What Is Flexible Fulfillment? Benefits And Drawbacks

Flexible Fulfillment is not a foreign management model for businesses - where transactions, sales, and purchases are exchanged between sellers and buyers. This retail strategy allows customers to buy and receive goods in various ways depending on their demand.

Flexible Fulfillment is an advanced supply chain management model that brings flexibility in order processing and product distribution. Unlike traditional methods, Flexible Fulfillment services allow businesses to adjust quickly and efficiently to the market’s needs. It is a system that integrates the latest technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, and data analysis to optimize the process from warehouse to transportation.

The primary goal is to deliver any order at any cost, thereby meeting the different needs of customers and making the customer’s shopping process easier and more convenient.

What Is Flexible Fulfillment?

Flexible Fulfillment is considered a modern and efficient method of managing and operating order fulfillment. Flexible Fulfillment helps businesses customize and optimize their operational processes to meet customer demands.

Some key aspects of Flexible Fulfillment include:

• Omnichannel ordering: Customers can place orders through websites, mobile applications, traditional stores, or eCommerce platforms. Then the retailer will find the fastest and most optimal way to deliver the goods, which can be from the store, central warehouse, or local warehouse.
• Direct delivery from the store (Ship-from-home): Retailers can use inventory stored in traditional stores to deliver directly to customers. This helps shorten delivery time, especially for orders near the store or distribution center.
• Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS): After customers place orders online, they can choose to have the items delivered to their home or pick them up directly at a nearby store. This provides convenience and reduces shipping costs for customers.
• Fast delivery: Retailers provide various delivery options to meet customers’ needs, such as express delivery on the same day for urgent orders. In addition, customers can choose a specific delivery time within a certain period to ensure that they receive the goods that suit them best. This has met the increasing demand of customers for delivery speed, which they pay a lot of attention to when placing an online order.

>> Learn more: 

• What Does Fulfillment Batching Mean 
• Omnichannel Fulfillment

What Are The Benefits of Flexible Fulfillment?

Benefits for customers

Convenient and flexible

• Delivery options: Customers have multiple choices for the location and method of receiving goods, such as home delivery, store pickup, or at a transit point, etc. Along with this, customers can choose suitable delivery methods according to their schedule and needs.
• Changing delivery address: With the flexible feature, Flexible Fulfillment can provide customers with the option to change the delivery address if they are unable to receive the package at the original address (for example: traveling, changing schedules, or moving houses). Customers can choose to have the delivery at their office, home, or any other location depending on their needs at different times. This helps increase customer satisfaction and trust due to the flexibility and responsiveness to their needs.

Time-saving

• Fast delivery: In addition to the available standard delivery (from a few days), this system also updates additional delivery options such as express delivery (same day or next day) to save waiting time and meet the demand for receiving products as quickly as possible.
• Pick up at the store: In addition to the option of staying at home and waiting for the order to arrive in a few days, customers can choose to order online and pick up the items at the nearest store. This is both convenient and creates a good impression of the brand's service.

Enhance shopping experience.

• Smooth shopping experience: The system creates a user-friendly interface for customers to easily place orders according to their preferences. The payment process will also be simplified and secure by providing popular payment methods such as credit cards, e-wallets, and cash on delivery. All customer information is guaranteed to be secure, and payment information will be stored for future purchases.
• Convenient in the process of exchange and return: If the product is defective, customers will immediately be supported to exchange the item for free within the specified warranty period.

Benefits for businesses

Increase customer satisfaction

• Better customer service: The business providing multiple channels of communication with customers such as phone numbers, email, chat, and social media has helped the business reach and easily contact more customers. As a result, customer complaints and feedback are promptly addressed in the shortest possible time.
• Reducing the cancellation rate: Thanks to optimizing the interface, delivery speed, and customer experience, the cancellation rate will significantly decrease compared to not implementing the Flexible Fulfillment system.

Reducing transportation costs

• Optimizing the transportation process: The use of routing tools, and optimal movement planning, combined with regular evaluation and updating of routes and travel times, will optimize and significantly reduce transportation costs.

Effective resource utilization: Using the existing inventory to deliver goods through various sales channels is a way to make the most efficient use of available resources to provide customers with goods as quickly as possible.

Increased competitiveness: Receiving positive feedback and a large number of loyal customers will establish a strong position for the brand in the market, thereby increasing the competitiveness of the business.

Data and analysis 

• Collecting customer data: By setting up a comprehensive customer database and updating detailed information, the system will store personal information, transactions, behaviors, and customer needs. In addition, by applying data analysis technology, artificial intelligence can understand customers more deeply.

Flexible Fulfillment has numerous benefits for both customers and businesses. If implemented well, businesses can quickly adapt to the ever-changing market, allowing for easy growth and expansion.

What Are The Drawbacks of Flexible Fulfillment?

Although Flexible Fulfillment brings many benefits, businesses also need to carefully consider it when applying it because this method has its drawbacks. For small businesses with few orders, it may not be suitable because they need to have enough locations to store goods everywhere.

Below are some difficulties of Flexible Fulfillment that businesses need to be aware of:

High cost

• Warehouse management costs: Costs of renting warehouses, packaging costs, maintenance costs, inventory counting costs, along with management costs and directly managing warehouse staff. These costs require businesses to have strong finances to maintain in the long term.

Complexity in management

• Order management: Orders include multiple lines of different products, styles, and sizes. Customers may have different requirements for delivery time, delivery location, and payment method. Not to mention the potential incidents or errors that can occur in the management process, making order management even more complex.

Technology requirements:

• To implement Flexible Fulfillment, the system needs to integrate various software and technologies (such as OMS, WMS, TMS, AL/ML, etc.) to analyze data and manage a large number of orders. Therefore, businesses need to equip themselves with multiple technology systems to effectively process orders for customers.

Flexible Fulfillment Alternatives

Flexible Fulfillment Alternatives are different strategies and methods that businesses can apply to deliver goods to customers in a flexible manner and fully meet their needs. By implementing these methods, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, reduce delivery time, and improve overall efficiency.

Common Flexible Fulfillment Alternatives include:

Automated Order Fulfillment

Automated Order Fulfillment is a system that uses automation technology to improve and optimize the process of receiving, processing, and delivering customer orders. Some functions of Automated Order Fulfillment can be mentioned as follows:

Automated order processing

• Automatically collect orders and import data from various sales channels (retail points, e-commerce, etc.)
• Automatically verify, check, and route orders to the appropriate delivery center.

Automated warehouse

• Automated storage and retrieval system (e.g. robots, automated cranes)
• Automated picking, packing, and sorting system (e.g. picking based on signal lights, sequential picking to personnel)

Inventory management

• Real-time inventory display at multiple locations
• Automated data replenishment and inventory forecasting

Integrated transportation

• Create and automatically label products
• Integrate with shipping company APIs to get rates and track

Track and report orders

• Update and automatically notify about order status
• Detailed reports on delivery performance and metrics

Distributed Fulfillment

Distributed Fulfillment requires businesses to invest in technology to manage the synchronization of multiple delivery points. Therefore, it can become more complex in inventory control and order tracking across the entire system. In which orders are processed and shipped from multiple different delivery points, instead of one centralized distribution center.

The key characteristics of Distributed Fulfillment include:

• Many delivery points: The delivery points used for distribution are warehouses, retail stores, and logistics providers. Each delivery point can handle a portion of the orders.
• Optimized transportation: After the orders are shipped, they will be routed to the nearest delivery point to reduce distance and transportation time.
• Flexibility and scalability: It is possible to add or remove distribution centers as demand changes.
• Improved customer experience: Faster and more accurate delivery helps increase customer loyalty to the brand.

In-House Logistics

When a company manages its logistics activities internally instead of outsourcing to a third-party service provider (3PL), internal logistics is often chosen by companies with large, complex, or strategic supply chains, where maintaining direct control over logistics is seen as a competitive advantage.

EFEX ASIA - The Best Automated Order Fulfillment Service

Flexible Fulfillment is an extremely promising system that can help your business create an impressive and positive customer experience by quickly processing order requests and delivering products promptly to customers. However, setting up a comprehensive Flexible Fulfillment system requires a lot of effort and expertise in management. This is the point that business owners always worry about before starting to implement a Flexible Fulfillment system.

Fortunately, EFEX is a specialized unit providing flexible fulfillment supply chain services with over 10 years of experience. Our services will help accelerate the order completion speed with the comprehensive Fulfillment solution EFEX. We will handle from the first step to the final step, and you will no longer have to worry about how to manage the warehouse effectively.

With a professional team and a reasonable transportation strategy, the order will be delivered to the buyer worldwide on time and within budget with preferential costs. In addition, the transportation time is shortened to just a few days because we have a network of warehouses in countries such as Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, and Tokyo.

For more detailed information and personalized support on how to build your flexible fulfillment service, visit our homepage. If you have specific questions or need assistance, feel free to contact us. All your concerns will be decided as soon as possible.