How the “Best of Breed” Strategy Works in Fulfillment Technology


Fulfillment services are built on their technology. Platform choices affect labor costs, accuracy, scalability, and even customer satisfaction levels. There is a wide range of options available to warehouse providers. When you choose an e-commerce fulfillment provider, it is important to consider the type of software they use.

 

Legacy Systems

Some warehouses use bulky legacy systems to manage their operations. To keep up with changing demands, particularly in the quickly evolving e-commerce landscape, fulfillment operations must update and upgrade. Upgrading a legacy system can be very expensive or complex, particularly if the system is written in an outdated programming language.

Many legacy systems are simply not built for high volume and omnichannel e-commerce. Often there is no technical support or security patching available for these outdated platforms. More flexible and secure solutions are needed to compete in today's market.

 

 

Best of Breed

A more modern approach to fulfillment and supply chain technology is to utilize the best relevant components and build a modular system.

Sprocket Express uses a “best of breed” strategy as its technical foundation. This allows us to pick functional software components and knit them together.

As an example, we take order entry software from one supplier and interface it with a warehouse management application from another and shipping software from a third etc.

Supporting that capability is software that we developed in-house to manage the process flows and to give our users a seamless transition from one application to another. We also have reliable IT and web development resources to maintain this compound system.

All together, this approach gives us the agility to acquire new functionality without having to throw out the entire system.

 

Conclusion

You are building a business for future success, so it's important to choose a fulfillment service that will be able to adapt with your business needs and customers' expectations as the e-commerce space changes. When you review your options, make sure to ask questions about the software and technology behind the scenes.

We love questions! Feel free to contact us to learn more about our software capabilities. We are happy to help clients make the best choice for fulfillment, even if it's not us.