You have decided to outsource fulfilment. Now you have to pick someone, and every provider’s website says roughly the same thing: reliable, efficient, customer-focused, state-of-the-art. Ours included.

None of that helps you choose. What follows is what actually separates a fulfilment partner that works from one that becomes a problem, and the specific questions that reveal the difference before you sign rather than three months in.

Start by being honest about what you need

Before comparing anyone, write down four things: how many orders you ship in an average month, what your peak month looks like, where your customers are, and what proportion pay cash on delivery.

These four numbers determine which providers are a sensible fit. A partner built for bulk pallets moving between distribution centres is the wrong choice for two hundred small parcels a month to individual homes, however capable they are. A partner who mainly serves Nairobi is the wrong choice if a third of your customers are upcountry.

Most bad fulfilment relationships are not failures of service. They are mismatches that were visible at the start and nobody checked.

The questions that actually tell you something

What is your delivery window outside the major towns? Everyone quotes a good number for Nairobi. The honest differentiator is what happens for a delivery to Kitale or Garissa. A provider who gives you a straight answer, including a slower one, is more trustworthy than one who quotes 24 hours everywhere.

How quickly is cash on delivery remitted, and how is it reconciled? If you run COD, this is the most important question you will ask, because it is your working capital sitting in someone else’s account. You want a specific schedule and the ability to match every payment to a specific order.

Can I see my stock levels myself? If checking your own inventory means phoning someone, you will stop doing it, and you will discover you are out of stock when an order fails. Ask to see the interface before you commit.

What happens when an order is lost or damaged? Ask directly and listen for a process rather than reassurance. Every operation loses something eventually. The difference is whether they have decided in advance what happens next.

Who do I call at 4pm on a Friday when something is wrong? A named person who knows your account, or a general line? This is the question that most separates providers in practice, and it rarely appears on anyone’s website.

How do returns get back into sellable stock, and how long does it take? Returns are where fulfilment partners quietly differ most. Stock sitting in a returns pile is stock you cannot sell.

What happens in December? Ask how they handled last year’s peak. Capacity that works in March and collapses in the run-up to the holidays is worse than no capacity, because by then you have no alternative arranged.

Visit the warehouse

This is the advice most often given and least often followed, and it is worth more than every question above.

Go and look. You will learn more in twenty minutes than from any amount of correspondence. Is it organised or chaotic? Can they find a specific item quickly when you ask? Are goods stored sensibly or stacked wherever there was room? Does the person showing you around know how the operation works, or are they from sales?

Any partner who is reluctant to show you the place where your inventory will live has told you something important.

Read the pricing properly

Fulfilment pricing is broken into parts: a set-up fee, receiving, storage, a fee per order fulfilled, delivery by destination, returns handling, and a percentage on cash collected. That structure is normal and not a trick, but it means the headline number tells you very little.

Ask for a worked example using your actual numbers. Give them a typical month, and ask what the invoice would look like. A provider who cannot or will not do that is one whose invoices will surprise you.

Two specifics to check: whether there is a minimum monthly charge, which matters enormously at low volumes, and how storage is calculated. Storage charged by space occupied falls as you sell. Storage charged as a flat monthly rate does not.

Start small

Whoever you choose, do not move everything at once.

Run a pilot. Send a portion of your stock and a share of your orders through them for a few weeks while you keep handling the rest. You will discover the real failure points quickly and cheaply, and you will still have your own process running if it does not work out.

Any provider confident in their operation will suggest this themselves. It is also the stage where you find out what they are like to work with when something goes wrong, which is the thing you are really buying.

What this all comes down to

The provider who answers every question above with a specific figure or a defined process is more likely to be a good partner than the one with the better brochure. Specificity is the signal. It means someone has thought about the failure cases before you asked.

Ask us the same questions. If our answers do not fit your business, we will tell you, and we would rather do that now than after you have moved your stock.

Book a free discovery consultation and bring your four numbers. We will tell you what it would cost and whether we are the right fit.

Read next

• Should you outsource fulfillment? — work out whether it makes financial sense before you start comparing providers.
• What cash on delivery really costs you — essential if a meaningful share of your orders are COD.

You can read how we handle each part on our warehousing and storage, order fulfillment and last-mile delivery pages.

GreyBox Courier & Fulfillment Centre
Shankardass House, Moi Avenue, Nairobi
info@greyboxcourier.com · +254 711 272 820