Everything You Need to Know About Magento Fulfillment

What is Magento?

Magento is an eCommerce platform that helps businesses and individuals to build their own online stores. The founders of the platform started development in 2007 and the first publicly available beta version was released in the same year.

It is headquartered in Los Angeles and is one of the largest online cart solutions providers in the world with over 100,000 online stores being developed through the platform. 

Magento is a platform as a service company and enables the development of its own digital commerce store.

It is a shopping cart software that offers online selling and point of sale solutions, complete control over the user interface and user experience, and integrations with several third-party providers of allied services.

It is a popular choice for people looking for a solution to develop their own shopping experience & competes with the likes of Shopify, WooCommerce, Unicommerce, etc.

Since 2018, Magento has been a part of the software giant Adobe. It is integrated into Adobe’s Experience Cloud which is a suite of marketing, analytics and enterprise tools for businesses. It was acquired by Adobe for a massive $1.8 billion and has since been its subsidiary. 

What is Magento Fulfilment?

Fulfillment in the eCommerce industry is an umbrella term for all the processes that are required to take an order (a product) from its origin to its final destination. The process is complicated and comprises several stages and partners. 

For better understanding, here are some steps that are usually a part of the fulfillment process:-

• Receiving
• Storage
• Packaging
• Labelling
• Dispatch
• Shipping
• Distribution
• Last-mile delivery

Order fulfilment is essential to the existence of online commerce. Since eCommerce companies lack brick and mortar presence, the products have to be delivered to the final consumer without compromising on the experience.

Digital selling has to replace the physical shopping experience and to be able to compete with a strong physical retail experience sellers need impeccable fulfilment. 

Several companies provide fulfilment services that enable businesses to perform a variety of activities seamlessly.

This enables the smooth functioning of an online store, however, to ensure that there is no friction between fulfilment service providers and sellers, platforms must be cohesive.

Therefore, with a solution such as an online shopping cart software like Magento, API integrations are necessary in order to facilitate the flow of information between various stakeholders in the fulfilment process.

Why is Magento Fulfilment Important for eCommerce Businesses?

Order fulfilment is critical to the success of any online business. Since online sellers do not operate out of physical locations, products that are sold by a store need to be handled by someone. This service is provided by fulfilment companies.

Fulfilment enables online businesses to work without the use of any physical infrastructure which eliminates the costs associated with maintaining warehouses and centres. Since products are accumulated in a single location, it also translates into faster order processing for businesses. 

Through fulfilment companies, online sellers can eliminate the need to hire additional staff to handle, process and dispatch orders. The whole process can be delegated to an expert service provider, which in turn ends up costing less than maintaining an in-house infrastructure.

Since inventories are handled by a third party, a business is also at liberty to offer more products. It also means that businesses can scale their operations on-demand with a fulfilment service provider as a rising number of orders can easily be fulfilled by a provider which already possesses the necessary infrastructure. 

The use of a fulfilment service provider also means that the business can focus its energy and talent on other aspects of the business which can contribute to business growth.

Since more hands are available on deck, creative pursuits can be explored in order to develop the brand, market it, and even branch out into newer markets. 

How Does Magento Facilitate eCommerce Fulfilment?

Magento offers several integrations that allow an online store to share information between multiple shipping and fulfilment partners throughout the world. 

Magento offers shipping integrations with one of the largest companies in the world such as FedEx, DHL and UPS to allow businesses to manage their orders and deliver their products effortlessly.

Integrations allow Magento to provide several automation capabilities, enabling businesses to reduce the manual work and delegate certain processes to a trust system based on pre-defined parameters.

It offers integrations for services such as cross-border eCommerce, address verification, order management, warehouse management among others.

Magento’s order fulfilment integrations allow online sellers to work closely with the partner of their choice.

Since it is integrated with almost 500 shipping and fulfilment services providers throughout the world, Magento allows businesses to choose from a variety of options.

However, should a seller feel they need to work with a partner which is not integrated with Magento, the partner of their choice can be integrated upon request subject to mutual agreement.

Magento Fulfilment Integration

Magento fulfilment begins with connecting an online store with the desired shipping or fulfilment partner. Upon successful completion, the items that a store is selling can be imported into the partner platform.

The products can then be sent over to the partner of choice whenever an order is placed. Such integration allows businesses to fulfil their products directly from their platform without having to deal with a partner independently.

Integrations allow multiple services to be availed at the same instance. This enables the performance of a variety of actions to be improved and helps a business save on time and the cost of operations.

Since integrations allow multiple systems to work fluently with each other, it gives businesses more room for growth.

How Fulfilment through Magento’s Platform Can Helps Your Online Business?

Since Magento allows businesses to create their own stores on its platform, it grants control into the hands of users. This control can be exercised for a variety of services.

Magento’s marketplace offers several integrations with multiple shipping and fulfilment partners around the world, which allows businesses to tailor their operations as they need them to be. 

Magento’s platform also enables automation through its fulfilment integrations. By eliminating the need to manually enter the details of every order to be fulfilled, the business can simply integrate with the fulfilment service or partner of their choice and let Magento’s platform complete such tasks automatically.

The reduction in intervention results in lower instances of human error, lower staffing costs and lower operational costs, while simultaneously providing more time and opportunities for businesses to focus on other aspects. 

Final thoughts

Magento is a leading provider of eCommerce shopping cart solutions. It is a globally recognized player in the digital storefront marketplace and is a popular choice for new and existing online businesses.

The platform is intuitive and gives maximum flexibility and control to businesses, allowing them to tailor their own store to best serve their target customers.

Since fulfilment is a major part of the online shopping experience, Magento offers the necessary integrations that allow businesses to perform these functions seamlessly.