Fulfillment: The Key to Successful Ecommerce

[mandy]

Growing at more than 25 percent per year, e-commerce gives consumers a lot of what they want: broad assortment and convenient shopping any time from anywhere. To successfully compete with the bricks, all e-commerce has to do is stock the "long tail," ensure order accuracy, ensure nearly instant gratification with overnight shipping and keep shipping costs down...

These characteristics of Internet retailing are driving the e-commerce supply chain to be as flexible, fast and low-cost as the Internet itself -- but traditional supply chain technologies cannot keep up. The ironic challenge of e-tailing is that the things making it attractive to consumers are exactly the things that make order fulfillment and DC (distribution center) operations difficult...

To compete effectively, e-commerce must figure out how to transform the distribution function from a cost center into a competitive asset...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/Fulfillm...61609.html

[JilleW]

I agree that there are a lot more potential problems with e-commerce on the seller side. While on the buyer side, buying online is usually the fastest and most economical way to shop. I think the biggest challenge is maintaining the site, parcel auditing, processing orders and shipping them out quickly and efficiently.