A fulfilment service centre is a critical part of the supply chain that facilitates online orders’ movement from an e-commerce firm to the customer. These centres perform critical tasks such as inventory storage, packing, labelling, dispatching etc on the behalf of eCommerce clients and help them manage their logistics in a seamless manner. They also enable them to focus on marketing, expanding their product portfolio and refining existing products without worrying about shipping or handling customer returns.

Is Shopify a fulfillment center?

These centres usually have a system that’s integrated with the client’s ecommerce platform to automatically sync up orders for processing. This helps streamline the fulfillment process and ensures that every order gets processed quickly and correctly. They’ll also be able to provide real-time inventory updates. This will help reduce the risk of delays or errors in the shipping process which will negatively affect the client’s brand and customer experience.

When a 3PL fulfilment centre receives your shipment from the supplier, they’ll typically store it until it’s needed for shipping. They’ll record it in their warehouse management system using an SKU (stock-keeping unit) to track each order. They’ll also communicate the status of the shipment to both the vendor and the end customer through regular updates via email or a dedicated chatbot on their website.

A good fulfilment provider will have relationships with multiple shipping carriers to ensure that their clients’ shipments get picked up and delivered in the promised time frames. They’ll have scheduled pickups for one-day and same-day deliveries for domestic and international shipments.