For growing e-commerce and B2B businesses, the moment you outsource your order fulfilment to a 3PL is often a turning point. Done well, it frees your team from packing tables and carrier negotiations, and lets you scale without the overhead of warehouse staff and space. Done badly, it creates a black box between you and your customers — with errors, delays, and complaints landing back on your desk.
Understanding what a professional pick, pack and despatch service should actually deliver — and what you have every right to demand — is the first step to making outsourcing work for you.
What does pick, pack and despatch mean?
The three terms describe the core order fulfilment workflow:
- Pick: A warehouse operative locates the correct items for a customer order, guided by a pick list generated from your order management system or e-commerce platform.
- Pack: The items are packaged appropriately — in the correct box or mailer, with the right void fill, inserts, labels, and any branded packaging elements you specify.
- Despatch: The packed order is manifested with the chosen carrier, labelled, and handed over for collection or dropped at a sortation facility. A tracking reference is generated and fed back to your system.
In between these steps, a good 3PL will also handle inbound goods receipt (booking stock in), quality checking, inventory management, and returns processing. The full service is sometimes called "3PL fulfilment" or simply "outsourced fulfilment."
The order flow in practice
- Customer places an order on your website, marketplace, or B2B portal
- Order is transmitted to the 3PL's WMS via API, EDI, or manual upload
- Pick list is generated and assigned to a warehouse operative
- Items are picked from their racking locations and brought to a packing station
- Order is packed, labelled, and checked against the order spec
- Carrier manifest is generated; tracking number is assigned
- Order is staged for carrier collection (typically same-day if received before cut-off)
- Tracking number is pushed back to your platform; customer receives despatch notification
The best 3PL fulfilment operations are invisible to your customers — the right product arrives in perfect condition, on time, with the right paperwork. When it's working, you don't hear about it.WSUK Fulfilment Team
What SLAs should you expect?
A credible fulfilment partner will commit to specific, measurable turnaround times. Standard expectations for a well-run operation:
- Same-day despatch cut-off: Orders received by 2pm (or later) should be despatched the same working day
- Pick accuracy: Industry standard is 99.5%+ — meaning fewer than 1 error per 200 orders
- Inbound booking: Goods received should be booked into stock within 24–48 hours of arrival
- Returns processing: Returns should be checked and credited within 48–72 hours of receipt
Ask your prospective 3PL to confirm these SLAs in the contract — not just as targets. If they can't commit to measurable accuracy and turnaround times in writing, that tells you something about how they operate.
Integrations and tech
Modern fulfilment depends on clean data flows between your sales channels and your 3PL's WMS. At a minimum, your 3PL should be able to receive orders and push tracking data. Preferably, they should offer:
- Direct API integration with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, or your ERP
- Marketplace integrations (Amazon, eBay, Etsy) for multi-channel sellers
- EDI capability for B2B and retail supplier compliance
- Real-time stock visibility through a web portal
- Automated low-stock alerts
If you're currently managing order fulfilment manually or via spreadsheet, even a basic integration will dramatically reduce errors and save hours of admin per week.
When does outsourcing make sense?
Outsourcing fulfilment makes sense when in-house handling is limiting your ability to grow or is costing more per order than a 3PL would charge. Typical trigger points:
- You're despatching more than 50–100 orders per day and fulfilment is consuming significant staff time
- You're renting warehouse space that's sitting underutilised between peaks
- Order errors or carrier complaints are creating customer service overhead
- You want to offer next-day delivery without investing in your own carrier relationships
- You're expanding into new markets and need distribution reach you don't currently have
Questions to ask before you sign: What is your same-day cut-off time? What pick accuracy rate do you guarantee? Do you operate your own carrier accounts or use mine? What happens when there's a pick error — who bears the cost? What does the onboarding process look like and how long does it take?
Ready to outsource your fulfilment?
WSUK handles pick, pack and despatch for businesses from 50 to 5,000+ orders per day. Get a quote in 2 business hours.