Interesting Blog post. I’m not sure if there are any single source vendors that you are talking about, especially for the SMB market. For the enterprise retailer there maybe with some companies that want to take over all the back office actions.

Seems like putting a lot of eggs in one basket, possibly unnecessarily. Better have some very strict performance guarantees with teeth and lots of Key Performance Indicators to measure the service delivery.

Watch out for data lock-in. Maybe you find this vendor, use them for a bit…don’t like them…but can’t extradite yourself from their clutches (Because you can’t find a second source or have gotten rid of the employees that could have done it).

If you can’t find this perfect vendor maybe change the criteria and look for “data compatibility” – make sure your component vendors all talk to each-other and are trusted by one another not to point fingers if there is a problem and instead buckle down and fix it.

I know Shipwire works with over 30 ecommerce shopping carts, payment systems and marketplaces so that merchants can quickly snap their e-commerce tools into our fulfillment house and get up and operating.

Cheers,

Nate
Shipwire order fulfillment
Warehouses in the U.S., Canada and UK
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