Your dream of a better-than-expected response - tons of orders pouring in - could become your worst nightmare if you lack inventory or the means to ship products quickly. This is why a reliable fulfillment system is critical to your online business.

As with traditional fulfillment, Web-based fulfillment involves systems and operations. Systems that allow online companies to transfer and streamline order filling are software, hardware, and communication lines, such as Digital Subscriber Lines, cable modem, e-mail, and telephone. Operations, on the other hand, focuses on practical details of the process, such as timelines, management, and tracking.

Back to Front
To optimize fulfillment, improving software and hardware needs to be a top priority. You can start by setting up a well-developed e-mail system that covers back-end operations. Integrating back-end with front-end operations can be done later.

Seamless integration means having the software and hardware in place to automatically move orders from shopping cart to warehouse floor. This can be costly. Fortunately, there are less expensive means. You can take orders from your Web site and manually enter them into the warehouse computers, or you can have warehouse staff retrieve orders and let accounting know when the orders are packed. Your budget and your current needs will determine your choice.

You can also hire an integration specialist consultant to create, customize, or implement necessary programs. The specialist can devise a network system to generate reports on inventory levels, order status, and returns that will be available to all relevant staff in accounting, warehouse, and customer service. v Either way, be sure sales staff and fulfillment personnel have a reliable system for communicating order status.

Consider XML
The more you can do using software, the more of your company's resources can be spent on research, development, marketing, and other key tasks. For decades, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been the standard for integrating back-end data storage, transfer, and manipulation of front-end sales procedures.

Recently however, Extended Markup Language (XML) has gained popularity as a systems integration mechanism. XML-based Web architecture allows businesses to access functions directly via the Internet. You can use your own computer system and browser interface to initiate orders, track shipments, and much more. This reduces the costs of creating an integrated fulfillment system and making it attractive online.

With XML, the system uses the Internet as a relay between departments. The time to incorporate an XML-based system is substantially shorter than revving up an EDI-based package. Yet XML also supports EDI capabilities if your in-house system already includes EDI.

XML is very good at creating Internet-user interfaces and provides additional features beyond EDI, such as easily customized fields. For more on XML, visit the Graphic Communications Association Web site or the inquiry.com site.