OnFulfillment Blog | Global Fulfillment

Your channel partners are critical to your ongoing success.  

Not only do they extend your market presence by providing additional “feet on the street” that supplement your direct sales force, they also offer regional expertise in locations where cultural, regulatory, or business differences require someone who “speaks” the local language.  Channel partners help you access new markets, lower costs, and improve your overall reach and service delivery capabilities.

So…are you getting the most out of your channel partners?  Or better yet, are they getting the most out of their relationship with you? Are you equipping them to adequately represent you in the field?  Is your organization working closely with your channel partners to keep them trained, informed, and up to date?

As an online merchant, the software tools you use to conduct transactions are absolutely critical to your operation.  

The ability to successfully process payments is obviously a must.  Safety protocols such as fraud protection and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption must be built into your e-commerce system to protect both you and your customers.  A user-friendly interface that makes purchasing items easy, intuitive, and seamless is mandatory, lest your customers abandon their shopping carts out of frustration.

Earlier this month, we had an extremely busy week at OnFulfillment that got me thinking about the old days and how far we’ve come as a marketing fulfillment company.

One of our largest customers—a global technology company that designs, develops, and supplies a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions—had recently acquired a well-known cloud computing and virtualization company.

As part of the acquisition, we were asked to assemble some “welcome aboard” kits—more than 18,000 packages consisting of gifts featuring the acquiring company’s brand and accompanied by a personal message from the CEO. These kits were to be delivered to facilities around the world, primarily in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Back in 2020 and 2021, when the world was in the throes of the COVID-19 lockdown, many companies scaled back their operations and revisited their business goals and objectives while adjusting to a new remote workforce.

Not OnFulfillment.

Rather than lose momentum, we viewed the slowdown as an opportunity to enhance our capabilities, expand our business, and introduce changes that were otherwise difficult if not impossible during busier times. While many of our competitors sat around waiting for the pandemic to end and business to return to normal, we took advantage of the downtime to implement improvements that allowed us to hit the ground running once the restrictions were lifted.

“Buy locally, distribute globally” is a sound business strategy. It provides a level of control that allows you to maintain consistency across products or materials, manage the brand, and take advantage of bulk pricing.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, however, it’s not quite that simple or straightforward.

Most countries, and many manufacturers, have customs rules and other regulations designed to prevent materials produced in a foreign country from being imported and distributed in different locations. Generally, these rules are designed to protect local businesses from unfair labor practices, and the penalties can be harsh, both economically and in terms of wasted time and resources.