B2B Fulfillment Workflows That Keep Retailers Smiling

B2B fulfillment workflows have a habit of making smart brands feel slightly nervous. Direct to consumer shipping is a breeze by comparison. One box goes to one shopper. Everyone feels successful. B2B is different. Instead of a single shopper in Boise, you are shipping pallets to Target, cartons to Walmart, and mixed freight to distributors who want a dozen rules followed before they will even think about unloading. Search trends show more operators than ever looking up things like how to improve B2B accuracy or why did my retailer reject my shipment. Those are the questions you ask when the workflow is not working and the penalties are starting to sting.

If you have ever felt like your B2B workflow is playing a prank on you, you are in the right place.

Why B2B workflows cause more stress than D2C

B2B fulfillment gets messy fast because it operates on a stage where mistakes turn into fines. One late receiving event at the warehouse becomes a late pick. A late pick becomes a missed retail appointment. A missed appointment becomes a rejected order or a chargeback. Something as small as a misaligned label or a pallet stacked one inch too tall can cause a retailer to send the entire shipment back home.

Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10, explained the intensity of those expectations. "Walmart is pretty intense with their labeling rules. Dick's Sporting Goods is the same. If you do not do it right, you get those massive chargebacks." Those chargebacks are not symbolic. They hit margins hard enough to make you reconsider your life choices.

But B2B workflows do not break because brands are careless. They break because most 3PLs are not built with B2B in mind. Their systems were made for small packages, not retail pallets. Their processes are tuned for speed, not compliance. Their teams handle thousands of tiny orders but struggle with twenty big ones that each have ten pages of rules.

Where most workflow breakdowns begin

It is tempting to blame B2B chaos on the final step, when orders actually move out the door. But the problems usually start at receiving. If your 3PL does not scan everything at the dock, the entire workflow becomes guesswork. Inventory accuracy gets fuzzy. Locations stop matching reality. Pickers go hunting for cases that may or may not exist. And by the time the B2B order gets built, something is wrong and nobody knows where the error happened.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment, sees this constantly from brands switching to G10. "One of the pain points our clients have experienced with previous 3PLs is inventory accuracy," he said. "Maybe their previous 3PL was not great at picking the orders accurately. So they were losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities of items." The worst part is that many 3PLs cannot explain where the error happened because their systems do not track product movement closely enough to know.

That tracking gap grows even more painful when B2B orders scale. A warehouse that handles single-unit e-commerce well often collapses under the weight of palletized retail orders. They may not know retailer carton rules. Or they may eyeball pallet height instead of measuring. Or they may pick B2B orders with the same tools used for D2C, which is like using a salad fork to dig a trench.

Why workflow visibility matters more in B2B than anywhere else

B2B fulfillment workflows demand visibility at every step. Without it, you cannot tell where mistakes enter the system. Retailers expect you to know exactly when every carton was scanned, where it went, who touched it, and how it was packed. They expect your WMS to reflect reality with absolute precision.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO, explained what separates a real B2B workflow from a weak one. "A bad WMS will not track inventory 100 percent," he said. "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it." This includes receiving, pallet moves, picks, staging, packing, labeling, and loading. If any one of those steps is not scanned, a retailer will find the inconsistency sooner or later.

This is why B2B workflows break so spectacularly at many 3PLs. Without full visibility, they cannot prevent mistakes, and once a mistake happens, they cannot untangle it. Meanwhile, retailers behave like time travelers from the future. They want exact data, exact accuracy, exact timing, and they want it yesterday.

The human bottleneck that ruins perfectly good workflows

Even with great systems, most B2B workflows fall apart because communication collapses. Many warehouses hide behind ticket queues where every reply comes from a different representative who barely knows the account. That model works fine for small e-commerce questions. It does not work at all for B2B emergencies.

Joel sees this contrast clearly. "At some 3PLs you get thrown into a ticketed queue, and you get different people replying every time," he said. "It can take days, if not weeks, to get a resolution." Days and weeks are unacceptable when a retailer has given you a 24 hour window to fix a problem. Some windows are even smaller.

At G10, every client has one person to call. Joel describes it simply: "You call one person. That is it. And things get done." That one detail reduces half the stress of B2B workflows immediately, because issues stop bouncing among anonymous inboxes. Someone who lives and breathes your account picks up the phone and pushes the problem through the building.

What a clean B2B workflow actually looks like

A proper B2B fulfillment workflow does not rely on improvisation. It relies on engineered simplicity. Each action must follow a clear path. Each path must be reinforced by technology. Each piece of technology must be flexible enough to adjust when a retailer changes a rule overnight, which they frequently do.

Brands coming to G10 often say the same thing. Their previous 3PL handled D2C well but fell apart the moment they tried to add Walmart, Target, Amazon, or Dick's Sporting Goods into the mix. Suddenly the workflow became tangled. ASNs were late. Pallets were wrong. Labels were off-spec. Appointments were missed. And chargebacks became a familiar sight.

Connor described the proper way to handle these transitions. "When we onboard a client who sells into places like Amazon or Walmart, the process changes depending on where they are selling," he said. "We work through all of their routing guide requirements and make sure the warehouse is ready before the first order ever drops." That setup step is what prevents mayhem later. It is also the step many 3PLs skip entirely.

The moments that reveal whether a workflow is strong or flimsy

You can tell whether a B2B workflow works by watching how a 3PL handles stress. When things go smoothly anyone can look good. The truth emerges when a retailer makes an unexpected demand or when a shipment gets delayed at a port.

Joel shared a vivid story that shows how G10 handles these moments. A client shipping to Target had an inbound delayed at the ports for several days. The retailer gave them a hard deadline with no exceptions allowed. "Our supervisor, warehouse manager, and several employees worked the entire day into the night, then came back at 5 a.m. to make sure we had the routing completed," he said. That is the difference between a workflow that looks good on paper and a workflow that performs in real life.

A different moment came during a social media surge for another client. Joel remembered it clearly. "We had an influencer blow up and suddenly there were far more orders than anyone planned for," he said. "The client asked, Can you help us? And we said, Yeah, we gotcha. Then we sent a truck to the carrier at midnight." That kind of reaction requires both strong systems and strong people.

The G10 approach to designing B2B workflows

G10 builds B2B workflows with three layers: clarity, visibility, and responsiveness. First, the workflow itself is shaped around retailer rules, not around warehouse shortcuts. Second, the technology logs every movement so accuracy stays high and audits become easy. Third, the people running the workflow are deeply invested in the brands they support.

This is not a side effect. It is intentional. Mark Becker, CEO and founder, once described the company culture by saying, "All we are is builders. We just love to build." That mindset shapes B2B workflows from the ground up. The goal is not to imitate large 3PLs or to chase volume. The goal is to let brands scale without feeling like they are gambling.

The bottom line for brands that depend on B2B

B2B fulfillment workflows are either an engine or an anchor. When they are built correctly, retailers see your brand as easy to work with. Orders arrive on time. Pallets look right. ASNs match perfectly. Chargebacks disappear. Your brand grows. When workflows are broken, everything becomes reactive and expensive.

If you want B2B workflows that behave calmly, predictably, and profitably, reach out to G10. You will get the clarity retailers demand, the accuracy your margins need, and the kind of partnership that makes growth feel steady instead of stressful.