It might seem strange that we introduce this issue so late in the day, but it is something we mentioned in the context of building your webshop. You do need to consider the issues at an early stage, but a certain amount of trial and error and experimentation is often involved.
One of the problems that always arises as soon as you set up a business selling to the rest of the world is how you are going to get your goods to your customer? So we need to consider the processes we go through to get them there. Normally an order will consist of one item, packaged and sent to one recipient via one carrier. But this is not always the case. So we need to clarify some terminology before we go any further.
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A CUSTOMER (the person ordering the goods) submits an (SALES) ORDER to you (...please supply ....)
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The SALES ORDER may consist of several DELIVIERIES each of which goes to a specific destination - a DELIVERY). Normally a SALES ORDER has one DELIVERY only.
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Each DELIVERY may contain several items bundled together and wrapped as a PACKAGE. Due to weight, contents, etc. it may require that the DELIVERY to be split into several PACKAGES.
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Each PACKAGE is then sent to the respective DELIVERY address via a CARRIER. Depending again on the size, weight, etc of each PACKAGE in the DELIVERY, we may use multiple CARRIERS and they may be DISPATCHED on different dates.
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In order to DISPATCH so that they arrive on time, the items must be PICKED, which means they are SCHEDULED for picking before DISPATCH.
This is best shown in a diagram:
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In this Section we deal with some of those issues: Picking, Packing, Dispatch and Carriers
It might seem irrelevant when you are a small business: all these things go on at the same time. However, come the peak season(s) and you have to bring in extra staff to help, then it pays to be organised. This section deals with the four main areas separately. If you work on the principle that these might be done in different locations by different people (and that you might even have sub-contracted the process to a third party) then they become very different things. Even if you do them all yourself then there are things you should consider.
On with the deliveries....