Pick and pack fulfilment is a term given to a range of warehousing processes that facilitate the seamless journey of products from storage to their final destination.
Behind every brand, every product sold in a retail environment, and every ecommerce purchase, are pick and pack services that have placed the products in the store or the hands of customers in an efficient, timely and cost-effective way.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Pick & Pack Fulfilment
Whether your organisation sells its products via retailers or direct to consumers across the UK, EU, or globally, professional pick and pack services deployed by a trusted, established 3PL partner like Delamode are the key to business growth.
Scaling-up your business from managing its own fulfilment out of your small office or home, to entrusting your fulfilment to a partner with an established bonded and non-bonded warehousing and shipping infrastructure has a number of big business benefits.
- Cost Efficiency: No need to invest in your own warehousing space, staff, training and equipment. At Delamode, we use a pay-as-you-go model, so your costs scale with demand.
- Scalability & Flexibility: Pick and pack services like ours help you to navigate busy periods, such as Black Friday and Christmas, without additional investment, and scale as your order volume increases.
- Expertise & Accuracy: Outsourcing your pick and pack fulfilment to skilled and experienced logistics professionals helps to reduce errors in picking, packing, shipping and returns.
- Faster Fulfilment: 3PL partners’ tried and tested processes, established infrastructure and relationships help to support quick turnarounds and flexible shipping options.
- Better Customer Experience: Pick and pack services like ours reduce mistakes, helping to boost customer satisfaction, and offer you the assurance that your products are packed in consistent, branded, secure packaging that enhances brand perception and reputation.
- Helps You to Prioritise Your Growth: Enables you to focus on product development, marketing, sales, and other growth activities.
- Access to Advanced Systems & Reporting: Our WMS, used across both our UK and EU facilities, provides you with inventory tracking, automated reporting and fulfilment analytics to assist demand planning and forecasting.
What Do Pick & Pack Services Look Like?
Pick & Pack fulfilment has four key elements: pick, pack, labelling, and shipping, but at Delamode our full pick and process is as follows:
1. Laying the Foundations
Consultation & Requirement Assessment – We work closely with you to understand your unique pick and pack requirements by developing an understanding of your: products, handling needs, packaging specifications and service level expectations (such as shipping timeframes).
System Integration & Onboarding – We integrate your sales channels and order management system with our Blue Yonder WMS, and ensure seamless data flows to provide real-time order processing and stock visibility.
Goods Receipt & Quality Checks – We receive your stock into our UK or EU fulfilment centres and conduct quality inspections, verifying quantities against purchase orders.
2. Inventory Storage & Management
Your products are then assigned a secure storage location (shelving, pallet racking or bins depending on the SKU size/volume) to support the deployment of fast, efficient and optimised pick and packing services.
3. Order Picking
As orders feed into our WMS, our team of skilled and highly experienced logistics professionals pick your products with great accuracy, using barcode scanning to minimise errors.
4. Packing, Customisation & Checking
We carefully pack your order according to specification (standard or branded packaging), and conduct packaging value added services such as gift wrapping, kitting and assembling multi-SKU product bundles for retail environments, and creating subscription boxes for ecommerce orders.
5. Labelling & Shipping
Labelling is a key stage in any pick and packing service, helping to ensure your goods are retail ready, and to help support your compliance with retailer, legal and territory-specific labelling requirements. Delamode can apply barcodes, QR codes, retail price labels, shipping and compliance labelling, and territory/language-specific labelling where appropriate.
Once labelled, we hand your goods over to one of our trusted couriers or freight partners, selected to meet your specific delivery requirements (24, 48, 72-hours, economy, international etc). Delamode’s integrated TMS offers you over 89 carrier integrations across all transport types and territories.
Pick & Pack Best Practises
When choosing a trusted provider of pick and pack services, be sure to look out for the following best practices – those we at Delamode have formed our processes around – as they are key quality indicators that can offer you assurance.
Picking
- Picking-optimised facilities and operations – Optimised warehouse layout, logical SKU storage practices, and efficient pick routes. Regular team training on accuracy, product handling and safety, and performance monitoring against accuracy and fulfilment speed KPIs.
- Efficiency-driven, tailored processes – Flexible pick and pack fulfilment methods tailored to your unique needs. Batch and wave picking methods to increase productivity and speed. Barcode scanning and verification to minimise picking errors.
- Technology (visibility and control) – Access to a WMS that provides you with visibility of your inventory, order status, and enables you to process orders in real-time.
Packing
- Practices and packaging options – Packaging processes optimised for speed, efficiency and accuracy. A range of high-quality, durable packaging options and secure sealing methods to ensure safety in transit. Ecological packaging options to help you meet sustainability goals. Branded packaging capabilities to help maximise your visibility and offer a branded customer experience.
- Customised packaging – For some clients, customised packaging will be non-negotiable for a pick and pack service provider, for e.g. gift wrapping products, assembling bundles, deploying kitting services for retail promotions, and subscription boxes for ecommerce orders. Adding promotional inserts and marketing materials.
- Labelling – Clear labelling and documentation to support shipping accuracy and tracking.
- Packing checks – Packing checks to ensure presentation standards are met. Final weight and dimension checks pre shipping to support compliance and calculate accurate courier pricing.
Both
- Reporting – Easy to access, real-time data reporting via a WMS, including exception reporting for easy discrepancy resolution. Access to performance reporting around pick and pack service accuracy and efficiency.
Contact our team to discuss how we can support your organisation with warehousing (including bonded warehousing) and order fulfilment. Whether you sell your products through retailers, shopping channels, or direct to consumers, you can entrust your pick and pack fulfilment to us.
