Tuesday, 17 November 2009 15:34 Written by Keith Shay 0 Comments

In a previous entry you may have read about the organizational reasons that publishers, both large and small, choose to outsource order fulfillment services.

By focusing on what they do best, a publishing house – regardless of its size – can enhance the overall effectiveness of their organization. Allowing an expert, such as Ware-Pak, to handle order fulfillment, the organization can benefit from increased customer service offerings, customer satisfaction and shareholder value.

I mentioned that I would be discussing additional reasons why publishers benefit from outsourcing fulfillment services. In today’s entry I would like to share the improvement-driven reasons for a publisher to outsource warehousing and fulfillment.

Here are the major questions to consider:

1. As a publisher, how do you improve your operational performance?
2. Do you have a warehousing industry viewpoint for operational expectations?
3. Do you regularly send people for warehousing efficiency training?
4. Is the organization more interested in developing great content or in fulfillment service excellence?

By outsourcing fulfillment services, you can obtain expertise, skills and technologies that your company does not already have. Many publishers do not have the volume of activity to recruit top talent inside the warehouse. When capital budgets are limited, it is often difficult to determine where to spend your technology dollars. You may need to sacrifice the ability to invest in a state of the art warehouse management system.

Within an organization, different divisions often compete for limited resources and management time. This can decrease the amount of time your organization has to dedicate to offering best in class warehousing services. Another challenge publishers may face due to limited resources is whether or not to hire a key executive to manage the warehouse because there is uncertainty of whether or not those salary dollars could have a higher impact on the business if they were allocated differently.

Outsourcing fulfillment services can improve risk management for the company. Part of risk management is diversification. When your warehouse facility is in a different location, you are decreasing your risk for fire and other acts of God. You are also increasing other factors, such as pools for selection of employees and access to the market.

Outsourcing can also help inspire innovative ideas. It can help you find answers to tough questions: Does your organization continually improve its warehousing function? Is your mission to be the best warehousing company available? Do your managers wake up in the middle of the night thinking about how they can improve your warehouse?

A relationship with a superior third party fulfillment service partner will improve your credibility and your image. We all want the ability to do business with successful partners. When you associate yourself with an industry leader, such as Ware-Pak, you are positioning your company as a quality business.

The combination of these “Why Outsource” blog entries will be available as a white paper shortly. If you are interested in receiving this white paper, please feel free to contact me directly. I can be reached at (708) 587-4116 or kshay@ware-pak.com.