In part one of this two-part blog series, we introduced a few of the biggest pain points that come up in the area of fulfillment. While there’s no magic wand available to solve these common problems, we’re proud to introduce the second best thing: a partnership with Spectra!

If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of the series, we invite you to do so now. In that post, we discussed three big issues: learning the ropes, customizing B2B offerings, and quality control. If any or all of those jump out at you as things your organization struggles with, read the post to see how Spectra helps clients achieve excellence in those areas. Now, here are a few of the other biggest issues we hear about from potential clients. Which ones resonate with you?

4. Real-Time Inventory Visibility

Throughout the history of fulfillment as an industry, this has been one of the toughest challenges to solve. All methods for tracking inventory have been limited by a gap between the moment inventory levels are measured and the moment that information becomes available to decision makers. By the time inventory is counted, compiled, and shared, stock levels may already have changed due to customer orders, restocking, and other activities. True real-time visibility into current inventory has only recently become widely available.

Spectra does what previous generations of e-commerce and B2B fulfillment managers could not provide: real-time visibility into what a company has in stock at any given time. We do this through our online portal system, allowing a client to log in, select the desired SKU, and instantly see how many units are currently available.

5. Metric Driven Inventory Management

This activity, which would be a common “magic wand” wish for many fulfillment clients, is closely related to real-time inventory visibility. The more accurately we can track inventory and the more detailed metrics we can gather on customer orders, the better able we are to predict future activity. This enables more effective optimization of inventory levels. If orders increase during certain seasons or months, we can increase inventory ahead of that time each year to make sure items are in stock when customers order them. If orders decrease, we can reduce inventory accordingly and avoid paying for items before they are needed.

There is an important by-product of this detailed inventory management that every manager loves to see: financial savings! Optimizing inventory means that less capital is being spent on materials that will sit on shelves for months or even years. That capital is freed up for the client to use to invest in other activities, like expansion into new areas of the business. 

6. Unanticipated Opportunities For Growth

A particularly creative individual might respond to the “magic wand” hypothetical question by asking to be told what opportunities are available that they might not otherwise consider. After all, the key to getting ahead of the competition is taking advantage of opportunities that no one else saw. The issue of “not knowing what we don’t know” is a hard one to address, but with the right kind of help, you can do it.

An organization that chooses to make Spectra its partner in third-party fulfillment finds that it gains much more than just basic fulfillment service. As time goes by and the partnership develops, Spectra becomes more familiar with the organization, what its goals are, and how it connects to their B2B end users. That knowledge combines with Spectra’s decades of success in the fulfillment industry helps generate creative ideas that might never surface if the organization tried to handled fulfillment in-house or worked with a basic fulfillment provider.

In the Spectra blog archives, you’ll find numerous case studies outlining just this kind of impact with our clients. From nonprofits to large national corporations, our clients have found that our fulfillment experts consistently come up with fresh, innovative ways to leverage fulfillment strategically. 

Fulfillment Plus Print: Close To Magic

In many cases, those ideas are linked to the fact that Spectra has its own in-house print facility. Having the ability to get high quality printed materials produced by the same service provider as your inventory management and shipping partner is an enormous benefit. All sorts of materials can be fully customized with surprisingly short turnaround times, and organizations that sell printed materials can have their entire end-to-end fulfillment chain managed by a single expert team.

While the advantages offered by the Spectra fulfillment team may seem like magic, the reality is that they are the result of many years of experience working in the field of B2B and B2C fulfillment. Our team members have built on their knowledge of the industry through huge shifts like the move to cloud-based technologies, the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain uncertainties, and many other challenges. The expertise we’ve developed over decades is available now to benefit your organization.

Which of these pain points hit closest to home for you? We have yet to find a manager who already has all of these challenges fully solved, so it’s a safe bet that there’s at least one item in our list that either keeps you up at night or that you know your organization could be handling more effectively. In an initial consultation with our fulfillment team, you can tell us what your priorities are in a third-party fulfillment relationship, what special considerations exist between you and your B2B or B2C customers, and what you want to improve on right away. We look forward to assessing your needs and demonstrating how Spectra can help achieve your goals.