Vendor-Managed Inventory Benefits & Advantages

(This article was last published on July 21, 2015. It has been updated for accuracy and completeness.)

While vendor-managed inventory (VMI) is not a new concept, it’s still not widely adopted by merchants. Yet, when executed correctly, a vendor-managed inventory strategy can bring huge benefits to your business (think cost savings and better customer experience). 

In this post, learn what exactly VMI is, it’s benefits, and how you can implement a VMI program for any size business.

Are Fulfillment by Amazon’s (FBA) Fees Worth the Cost?

(This post was last published on August 19th, 2019. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

In 2019, Amazon reported that they delivered an estimated 3.5 billion packages globally. And, they expect to deliver 80% of their own packages by 2021. 

In some ways, Amazon has been making more headlines for their renowned fulfillment network over the marketplace itself. They continue to innovate to ensure packages end up on doorsteps as quickly as possible. 

As an Amazon seller, you might be asking yourself, “Should I be using FBA?”

This post explains how FBA works and what you need to consider before joining the program. Keep in mind, it’s not always the answer for everyone!

Top 5 Order Management Systems

(This post was originally published on April 1, 2015. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

As your sales increase, your manual order processing can begin to break down. You take too long to enter data, you’re prone to critical errors like shipping to the wrong address, and you can’t easily track orders for customers.  

At this point, your online business is ready for an order management system (OMS), or software built to help you centralize your order processing across sales channels and fulfillment methods. It automates your workflows and helps you control your customer experience. 

However, there’s no shortage of order management software available today. To help you narrow down your choices, we compare the top 5 order management systems for you.

6 Strategies to Ship in a Sustainable Way

(This is a guest post from our friends over at Arka, provider of custom and sustainable packaging supplies.)

You can attest to the fact that e-commerce and online shopping has become the norm in recent days. With about 600 million orders being mailed each day into the U.S alone.

Without much ado, anyone can make a purchase online and have it shipped right to the comfort of their home without having to move an inch. Unfortunately, as with most recent improvements, this upsurge has also taken its toll on the environment.

While environmental consequences are almost inevitable, e-commerce businesses can take steps into ensuring that they fulfill their customers’ orders while ensuring that their processes are also environmentally friendly—for Arka, sustainable packaging and shipping is the hallmark of their operations.

With more people becoming conscious of the environmental impact of our daily activities, businesses need to find a way to fulfill their social responsibility by adopting sustainable practices in their operations.

Everything You Need to Know about Partial Shipment

(This article was last published on June 29th, 2016. It has been updated for accuracy and completeness.)

You can’t always ship an entire order at once. You might even prefer to ship items separately to ensure they arrive on-time. Some items could ship from a service like Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) while others are fulfilled from your own warehouse.

Fulfillment of a single order in multiple shipments is referred to as partial shipment. While often necessary, it’s difficult to monitor on the backend of your operations. How do you track partial shipments in your systems? How do you ensure orders are mark completed only once all items are fulfilled?

Before executing partial shipment, you’ll need to know what the process is, why it’s important to get it right, and the best way to do it.