Pick and Pack Fulfilment
Order fulfilment run on accuracy rather than speed alone — because a wrong item shipped costs more than a slow one.
Fulfilment is an accuracy problem before it is a speed problem
Everyone benchmarks fulfilment on dispatch time, and dispatch time is the easier half. The expensive half is accuracy: the wrong item picked, the right item in the wrong quantity, a fragile product packed as though it were not.
A late order annoys a customer. A wrong order costs the outbound freight, the return freight, the replacement, the handling on both legs and, frequently, the customer. We would rather be measured on the pick error rate, because that is the number that decides whether the operation makes money.
What the service covers
A managed fulfilment operation, run from our facility on your stock, with your branding on what reaches the customer.
- Goods-in, inspection against the purchase order and put-away to a mapped location
- SKU-level stock control with cycle counting rather than an annual stocktake
- Order picking against your channel feed, batched where volume allows
- Packing to a specification you set, including your own boxes, inserts and branding
- Courier and carrier allocation, with rate shopping across services rather than one default
- Dispatch, tracking and exception handling when a parcel stalls
- Returns received, inspected, and either restocked or quarantined to your rule
Stock accuracy is the foundation, and cycle counting is how you get it
A fulfilment operation is only as good as its stock record. If the system says eleven and the shelf holds nine, you will sell eleven, and two customers will have a bad experience that no amount of dispatch speed compensates for.
The answer is not an annual stocktake that shuts the operation for two days and produces a large unexplained adjustment. It is continuous cycle counting — a rolling count of a portion of locations, every week, with variances investigated while the cause is still traceable. It catches the mis-pick that created the discrepancy rather than just recording its effect months later.
Packing is a cost decision as much as a protection one
Carriers charge on volumetric weight as well as actual weight, so an over-boxed order is charged for the air inside it on every single parcel. Across a year that is a substantial and entirely avoidable number.
The opposite error costs more per incident: under-packing produces damage claims, returns and replacements. The right answer is a box range matched to your actual product mix, with the specification set per SKU rather than by whoever is packing that morning — and it is worth reviewing when the product range changes, because most box ranges are chosen once and never revisited.
Returns, which most operations treat as an afterthought
Returns are where margin quietly disappears. A returned item that sits unprocessed is stock you have paid for, cannot sell, and are not counting. A returned item restocked without inspection is a complaint waiting to be posted to the next customer.
We process returns to a rule you set: inspected on receipt, graded, and either restocked, repaired, quarantined or written off, with the reason recorded. That reason data is worth more than the goods — a concentration of returns against one SKU is usually telling you something about the listing, the packing or the product itself.
Peak, and planning for it before it arrives
Almost every consumer-facing operation has a season where volume multiplies, and almost every fulfilment failure happens inside it. Capacity that is comfortable in August is not comfortable in the fortnight before a festival, and the constraint is rarely space — it is pick hours and carrier collection slots.
We plan peak from your own prior-year data rather than from a general assumption: which SKUs actually spike, how far the daily order count moves, and where the cut-off has to shift. Staffing and carrier bookings follow that, agreed in advance, because peak labour and peak carrier capacity are both things you cannot buy at short notice.
Reporting you can actually act on
Stock on hand by SKU, ageing, pick accuracy, dispatch performance against the cut-off, carrier performance by service and lane, and return rate with reasons. Delivered on a schedule rather than on request.
The point of the reporting is to surface the two or three things that are costing money — a slow-moving SKU tying up space, a carrier underperforming on one region, a product returning at three times the rate of everything else. Reporting that does not change a decision is overhead.
Asked often about this service
Can you integrate with our sales channels?
We work from your order feed and return dispatch confirmations and tracking to it. The practical requirement is a reliable, structured feed of orders and a way to send status back — we agree that at setup rather than assuming a particular platform.
Do you use our packaging or yours?
Yours if you have it, and we will hold and replenish it. If you do not, we will specify a box range against your actual product mix — which usually reduces carrier cost, because most operations ship a lot of air inside boxes chosen before the range settled.
How do you keep stock accurate?
Rolling cycle counts rather than an annual stocktake, with variances investigated while the cause is still traceable. An annual count tells you the number is wrong; a weekly count tells you why.
What happens to returns?
They are received, inspected and graded, then restocked, quarantined or written off to a rule you set, with the reason recorded against the SKU. That reason data usually matters more than the individual item.