Supply Chain Management

Order fulfillment is a key process in any product or services company. The process of order fulfillment encompasses all the activities that take place between the placements of an order by a customer and to the delivery of the order to the customer. The order fulfillment process can be viewed from two perspectives: strategic and operational.

The strategic order fulfillment process determines the requirements and systems that need to be in place to fill the customer orders. The operational order fulfillment process deals with the activities that have to be performed to fill the order. The e-fulfillment process is different from the physical order fulfillment process.

Most e-commerce organizations use one or more of the following order fulfillment strategies: distributed delivery centers; partner fulfillment operations; dedicated fulfillment centers; third-party fulfillment centers; and build-to-order. The key factors that influence the responsiveness of the order fulfillment process are the nature of the product, the nature of product demand, production triggering, and meeting customer demand.