Fulfilment outsourcing setup

We shift fulfilment from your own warehouse to a provider, from the decision on what to hand over to the first week of live orders. The group receives the scope of the handover, the operating rules between you and the provider, the stock transfer plan and the controls it holds from day one.

The board can say what moved, what stayed, what it now costs per order and who answers when a customer is let down.

• A scope decision paper listing every fulfilment activity, with a keep or hand-over decision and the reason.
• An operating model setting out who holds stock, who owns returns and who answers customer queries.
• A stock transfer and cut-over plan with a dated sequence, count points and fallback.
• An interface specification for order, stock and returns data between the group and the provider.
• A control pack of service levels, reports and a reconciliation calendar the group will run from day one.

• You see cost per order before and after the transition, on one stated basis.
• Stock counts agree at cut-over and at every count after it, and the variance is reported each time.
• Orders ship on the promised day through the first month of live running.
• Every fulfilment activity has an owner on your side and the provider's.
• Customer contacts about delivery are tracked in the first quarter against the quarter before, and the board reads the change.

Outsourcing is often decided on a cost comparison and then run as a handover. The group finds, after launch, that returns are no one's job, that stock counts disagree, and that the provider's system and the group's do not agree on what is available to sell.

• The warehouse is full, and growth is being limited by storage or labour.
• A board paper proposes outsourcing, and nobody has written down what the group keeps.
• Fulfilment costs are spread across payroll, rent and courier lines and cannot be added up.
• A previous outsourcing attempt stalled at the point of stock transfer.

Brands and retailers whose own warehouse has run out of space, people or management attention, and distributors considering handing part of the flow to a provider while keeping the rest.

Qasim Abbas has answered for treasury above USD 50M at group level and brings that grip on cash timing to a fulfilment move. We time the transfer of your stock into the provider's warehouse against the cash it releases and the cash it ties up.

We design around the order management and warehouse systems the group and its provider run, and the ledger behind them, including Xero and NetSuite. See how fees work.

Can we outsource part of the flow only?

Yes. Many groups start with one channel or one market and widen later, and the scope paper is built to allow that.

How long does the transition take?

The transition runs to a dated plan that we write after reading your stock volume and system connections, and the board commits against those dates.

Tell us what you are thinking of handing over and by when. We test the decision with you at a private briefing with the Managing Partner before the board commits.