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Order Fulfillment Overview

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When you are a business that sells products, you know what it takes to get those products into your customer’s hands. You have to receive the order, whether it is by mail, phone, or the Internet. You take that order, record it by placing it into your order processing system, and then you transfer the order to the warehouse where they pull the product from the inventory, package it, and ship it. This whole procedure is known as order fulfillment. Order fulfillment is quite a heavy responsibility. Not all companies can handle the load. In many situations, companies outsource order fulfillment to a third party so they can deal with the aspect of growing their business. In order to understand the process of order fulfillment and why companies outsource it, you need to know some aspects of order fulfillment and what is involved. It is easier to work with a company when you have the ins and outs of what it is you are doing, along with the technology involved. This makes it easier for you to work the system. Here are some things about order fulfillment you need to know:

• Capture information: The one thing order fulfillment does is capture information from the customer. This may include the demographics of the customer, along with other types of information like the customer’s personal information, likes and dislikes, and other types of pertinent data. The order itself may contain what the customer needs and when they need it.
• Process orders: When such data is collected and received, it is processed into some kind of order tracking system; perhaps some kind of database.
• Promotions: Marketing people will use order fulfillment to help sell more products. They will offer customers discounts on certain packaged goods if they order by a certain time. This data is kept available to the marketing department by means of a database system or information query module. All of it is part of the order fulfillment process.
• Charging the customer: The one thing about order fulfillment is its ability to charge the customer. In other words, when the customer places the order, the person taking the order will ensure payment of the product by credit or other means of payment including a purchase order, if it is another company. All stages of the order is handled including credit card processing, installment billing if set up, electronic depositing, charging sales tax, and more.

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