40% of managers who install a new in-house system will be gone within three to six months.
-by John Chilson, Circulation Solutions Magazine
Fulfillment is all about getting the
customer what they ordered
when they expect it. (Notice: I didn’t say “
as fast as possible”) Ever since the first
mail order catalogs came to be around the turn of the century the problem of fulfillment has required that companies find ways to
process orders. The first fulfillment systems were
file cabinets, bins, racks and an army of
clerks and
mailroom people who read each order as it came in, verified the
payment (or created an
account to be paid off later by the
customer) and then mailed the
product.
Subscriptions required even more
paperwork, but somehow early magazines managed to get just about everything right without the aid of
computers.
Modern companies with
fulfillment problems were among the first small companies to purchase computers. The computer (they all
thought) would simplify the problem of fulfillment. In some cases this was true, but in many others, poor systems wreaked havoc with companies.
Imagine you receive 200 orders online for your candy. Your candy costs $5 a box. Your fulfillment system tells the boys down in the
mailroom what to mail where. To make matters more complex you candy comes in 5 colors and 3 shapes. Due to poor
software and negligent monitoring of that software you end up sending out only 100 of the orders, and 50 of them are wrong. Now you start getting calls from your
angry customers. They want
refunds, but you already used most of the money you made to improve your candy
production line and to pay the guys down in the mailroom. You also must re-send 50 of the
orders and
take a loss on the candy you sent out mistakenly. This is what can happen when you depend on a
black box whose workings you do not understand to sort out something as
critical to business success as fulfillment.
If a fulfillment system sounds
too good to be true it probably is. Trust nothing that a manufacture of fulfillment software says.
Never buy anything you don’t understand. When all else fails, buy some bins and a
filing cabinet.