To thrive as an ecommerce business today, you must be able to deal with constant changes and challenges in your supply chain caused by various factors, including:
- Seasonal spikes: During periods like the end-of-year holiday shopping season, ecommerce businesses experience a surge in orders. In the 2024 holiday season, for example, US consumers spent a record $241 billion online, up 8.7% from the previous year. In order to deliver orders on time to customers during the holidays and other peak periods, your ecommerce business must have the capacity (in terms of workforce, warehousing, and fulfillment operations) to handle significant spikes in demand.
- Supply chain issues: Severe weather events, labor shortages, military conflicts, and other factors have caused supply chain volatility and disruptions in recent years.To cope with these unpredictable supply chain dynamics, your ecommerce business needs to have operational agility.
Many ecommerce companies enlist third-party logistics (3PL) providers to help them handle their logistics operations, including order fulfillment and inventory management. Traditionally, however, engaging a 3PL required businesses to enter into a long-term contract with storage and throughput commitments, along with a hefty price tag.
In recent years, a new breed of 3PL has emerged, offering a menu of on-demand services that you can pick and choose from depending on changing supply chain dynamics and your evolving business needs. One of these 3PLs is Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), an end-to-end logistics solution that offers ecommerce businesses access to services along every step of the supply chain, including warehousing and distribution, ground freight, and more. Amazon’s Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) service is part of the fulfillment arm of ASCS, and ecommerce businesses that engage MCF gain access to Amazon’s global fulfillment network on demand to store, pick, pack, ship, and deliver orders from anywhere they sell, including Amazon.com and non-Amazon channels like ecommerce marketplaces or social media stores.
An increasing number of ecommerce businesses are choosing to use 3PLs on demand, whenever and wherever they need additional logistics capabilities.
In this blog, we explore the three key benefits of using an on-demand 3PL provider to handle your ecommerce order fulfillment.
Benefit #1: Flexibility
One of the primary benefits of engaging a 3PL to provide on-demand ecommerce fulfillment is that it gives your business the flexibility you need to cope with sudden swings in demand and unpredictable supply chain shifts.
If you handle your order fulfillment in-house or outsource to a traditional, contract-based 3PL, you have limited capacity (in terms of your workforce, warehouse storage space, and picking, packing, and shipping resources). You can probably get by operating with these capacity constraints—until you hit a surge in demand, like during the holiday peak shopping season. During these times, you must be able to quickly expand your capacity so that you can manage high order volumes and meet customer expectations for a speedy, seamless fulfillment experience—and a 3PL that offers on-demand fulfillment services can help you with this.
By engaging MCF, for example, you can:
- Leverage the world’s largest fulfillment network, which is made up of over 2,000 facilities, including more than 200 US fulfillment centers, 100,000 trailers, containers, and aircraft, and over 1.5 million employees and partners—to fulfill your customer orders whenever and wherever they are placed.
- Give your customers the first-class Amazon fulfillment services experience that they know and love, across all your off-Amazon channels (including your brand website and social media stores) and throughout the year (even during the busy holiday shopping season).
- Operate from a single pool of inventory that can be used to fulfill orders on all channels you sell on. This approach allows for better inventory visibility and management and reduces the likelihood of stockouts.
- Get simple, pay-as-you-go pricing for storage and fulfillment—with no contracts or hidden fees.
- Provide fast, reliable delivery across the ASCS network: MCF averages a 96.4% on-time delivery rate for all MCF orders worldwide.1
Using a 3PL that provides on-demand ecommerce fulfillment services can not only give you the capacity you need to manage surges in demand during peak periods, it can also help you easily scale down your operations during slow shopping periods. Since MCF is part of the broader ASCS network, businesses can choose to flex support up or down as needed, all through a single vendor relationship.
With the on-demand ecommerce fulfillment model, you are not locked into long-term contracts and obligated to adhere to volume and throughput commitments with your 3PL provider. You have the flexibility to throttle up, slow down, or switch off your 3PL services at any point in time—depending on your fluctuating supply chain dynamics and changing business needs.
1Based on all orders placed and delivered between October 2024 and September 2025, and measuring the percentage of orders that were delivered on or before the estimated delivery date generated upon order confirmation.
Benefit #2: Efficiency
The second key benefit of using a 3PL for on-demand ecommerce fulfillment is that it can help you achieve greater operational efficiency and reduce overhead costs. Managing your order fulfillment in-house can be challenging and costly—but engaging a 3PL can help you streamline your operations and improve your bottom line.
By engaging a 3PL to provide on-demand fulfillment services, you can:
- Optimize the efficiency of your order fulfillment operations from online checkout to delivery at your customers’ doorsteps.
- Eliminate the need to hire staff to manage your order fulfillment as well as the need to make significant investments in logistics infrastructure and equipment—thereby cutting your overhead costs.
This was the case for smart home device retailer Wyze, which saw a dramatic improvement of over 50% in click-to-delivery speeds as well as a significant drop in operating costs after engaging with MCF (along with order management solution Pipe17).
Wyze’s Principal Technical Program Manager Eric Morris summed it up: “With MCF and Pipe17, we’ve been able to automate our order fulfillment process, cut our delivery times in half, and leverage Amazon’s fulfillment network to provide a Prime-like experience for customers—while, at the same time, reducing overhead in terms of full-time employees needed to manage our order fulfillment operations.”
By allowing you to tap into your 3PL provider’s fulfillment network, resources, and expert team whenever you need them, on-demand 3PL services can enable you to boost your operational efficiency and your bottom line.
Benefit #3: Ability to scale
Another important benefit of using a 3PL for on-demand fulfillment is that it can give you the capability to easily and effectively scale your business across new markets, product lines, and sales channels.
Let’s face it: The business world is constantly changing and—in order to capitalize on new opportunities—you must be able to adapt your business plans and adopt new ones as well. Whenever, wherever, and however you want to expand your ecommerce business, 3PLs that offer on-demand ecommerce fulfillment services are there to provide the logistics support you need. Because it’s a part of Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), engaging MCF for fulfillment support means gaining access to the global ASCS network, which can help fuel your global growth and position you to expand into new markets with ease.
Aromatan, a fragrance business, grew across multiple countries and ecommerce channels with Amazon as its 3PL.
Aromatan’s CEO Taha Nabee commented, “MCF has been instrumental in helping Aromatan transform into a digital-first, global, multichannel fragrance brand. I would recommend MCF to any ecommerce business as it provides a great path to reach consumers around the world, through any channel. With MCF, we can easily expand our business across different countries and ecommerce channels.”
On-demand ecommerce fulfillment for your business
By providing you with greater flexibility, efficiency, and the ability to scale your operations, 3PLs that provide on-demand ecommerce fulfillment services can help support your growth in today’s unpredictable business landscape.
No matter where your ecommerce journey takes you or what supply chain challenges you encounter along the way, a 3PL fulfillment service like MCF can offer you the capacity and capability you need to succeed.
