OrderTrust CEO Jim Daniell says it best: "Bad things happen to good orders every day." What does it say about your company when your orders arrive late, incomplete or not at all? Find out how you can turn those mistakes into loyal customers. OrderTrust handles the backend control of finance and order fulfillment for companies like SkyMall and Fingerhut. That means they know an awful lot about getting the right orders in the right customers' hands. Should your company outsource order fulfillment? Jim Daniell can help you decide.

First, Look at What You Need

Your company may be best served by any of multiple solutions. The first step toward finding your ecommerce solution is looking at your company's needs. "First and foremost, what's your order volume going to look like?" Daniell asks. "How many orders are you going to get and are they going to be seasonal in terms of spikes for Mother's Day or for another holiday and so forth?" A seasonal company like a flower business or a Christmas card seller can anticipate a giant spike around holidays. Whatever solution that type of company would choose would have to handle that spike efficiently or risk significant lost revenue. Decide how much of a reach your company will have. Will you stick to ordering from just one warehouse or supplier? That may not require the complexity of an outsourced solution. The final area to consider is repeat visits - will you be getting loyal and returning customers? "When you actually are designing a system to be fault tolerant, fool proof and easy for the customer to use, you have to keep in mind that there will be mistakes. When they occur, a dissatisfied customer will tell ten people," Daniell says. But by understanding and swiftly fixing these problems, you can make an ally out of an unhappy customer. "So in selecting a solution, you're looking for tools that allow you to not only have a great selling system, but really good tools to audit and monitor problems. If you have unhappy customers, make it easy to reach out to them with e-mail or a world class call center solution with good call center representatives so that when the customer calls in complaining, you immediately offer them a reward on the spot for example," Daniell says.

Next, Decide to Start Small

Starting small can limit the mistakes you make at first, Daniell says. Iron out problems at the beginning and you clear the path for growth. "Make one very important backend decision," Daniell says. "Start with a small number of products and take them out of one warehouse. Learn how to handle a small set of SKUs first before you spend all your marketing money." After the first launch-and-learn experience, you'll have to adjust for growth. "As soon as you've got your end to end operations actually working, you need to have a lot more product to keep customers coming back to your site," Daniell says. "If you're selling in one category, you almost always have to have other categories because people only come back to well merchandised sites." That may be the point where you want to outsource your backend. The more suppliers you connect to, the more product you'll be able to handle.

Fail Up

If all else fails, remember this mantra: start small and grow fast "You have to design these systems end to end from the beginning and it's a process, not an event," Daniell says. "Don't try to do everything all at once, but plan for the future on an end to end basis." Companies without a great deal of fulfillment experience should start with limited products and a little bit of help. "The term I use is fail forward fast. Do it on the cheap. Work with vendors who offer you turnkey solutions. Learn a little bit about it and then systematically extend - bring in house or upgrade elsewhere as you start to understand how it works rather than go for the bigt bang," Daniell says. Think about all the pieces of the puzzle: selecting the right products, advertising them onsite, coordinating with vendors, handling customer satisfaction. Each piece has to have a plan for success and for failure. Getting your products sold is one hurdle. The next is getting it to your customers perfectly. Outsourcing can take some headaches off your hands, but only you know if it's right for your company. Decide what your company needs before you have some emergency on your hands. It's the only way to be sure your customers will return.