E-Commerce Fulfillment Metrics

When metrics are missing, fulfillment becomes a guessing game

E-commerce is a game of promises. The product page promises availability. The checkout promises a delivery date. The confirmation email promises speed. If the warehouse cannot keep those promises consistently, the business starts bleeding in quiet ways: support tickets rise, refunds increase, and customers stop coming back. E-commerce fulfillment metrics are how you stop guessing, because they turn your promise into a measurable system.

Many brands start tracking metrics after something goes wrong. Orders ship late. Inventory shows as available and then vanishes. A marketplace warns you about performance. A retailer fines you for noncompliance. In each case, the root problem is the same: the business did not have a clear, timely view of how work was moving and where it was getting stuck.

Why SLAs define the metric set

Fulfillment metrics are not random. They should be shaped by the SLAs you are expected to hit. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10 Fulfillment, described the scope of an SLA in a way that maps directly to measurement. "An SLA is a Service Level Agreements for Receiving, Outbound, and B2B." That matters because you cannot build a D2C promise on top of slow receiving or fuzzy inventory. You also cannot survive B2B shipping without tracking compliance milestones.

For D2C, the SLA often looks like a same-day cutoff. Malmquist described that cutoff in plain terms. "For D2C, which is an order through Shopify or on the merchant's website, if it's before noon, we're going to ship that order the same day." E-commerce fulfillment metrics should show how often that promise is kept, but they should also show why it is kept or missed, because the why is what you can fix.

On-time fulfillment rate is the headline, but it is not the whole story

On-time fulfillment rate is the metric customers feel first. If it drops, the brand pays for it in support volume and churn. Holly Woods, Director of Operations at G10 Fulfillment, described the level of performance modern brands aim for. "We currently can boast a 99.9% on time fulfillment rate." That kind of result only stays stable when the supporting metrics, staffing, and processes are stable, too.

The trap is treating on-time as a single blended number. A D2C same-day cutoff behaves differently than a two-day promise. A B2B retailer order behaves differently than a single-unit subscription shipment. Segmenting on-time by channel, cutoff window, and service level is how the metric becomes diagnostic instead of cosmetic.

Fulfillment cycle time shows where the day is being lost

Cycle time is the elapsed time between order release and key milestones like pick completion, pack completion, and ready-to-ship staging. When cycle time grows, it usually means a bottleneck is forming. By the time on-time shipping drops, cycle time drift has often been rising for days.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10 Fulfillment, described what brands hear when their fulfillment operation is not built for modern expectations. "I hear nowadays a lot of people want to offer you know same-day fulfillment for customers who place orders before specific times, which is something we do. But then I hear a customer say, 'A previous 3PL took three days from when the order was placed to when they would ship it.'" That is cycle time in plain English, and it is why brands switch providers.

Order accuracy protects you from the most expensive kind of speed

Fast mistakes cost more than slow correctness. Order accuracy metrics track whether customers receive the correct SKUs, quantities, and documentation. They should be measured at the order, line, and unit level, because each level reveals a different error pattern.

Malmquist described the level of accuracy that stood out to him when he joined G10. "We have over 99.9% ship accuracy of these orders, which when you look at it on a unit level, such as unit shift versus unit errors, I almost couldn't believe it when I came here, how well we're doing on B2B shipping." Accuracy at that level usually depends on scan-based verification, slotting discipline, and clear exception workflows, because humans do not produce that consistency on hope alone.

Inventory accuracy prevents oversells and backorders

Inventory accuracy is the metric that keeps the store from promising what the warehouse cannot deliver. When inventory records drift, the business starts selling ghosts. That leads to canceled orders, partial shipments, and customer disappointment that is hard to repair.

Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects at G10 Fulfillment, described what customers complain about when they come from another provider. "Most of the customers who come to us from another 3PL, their challenges have always been access to their data, order accuracy and efficiency, and basically just meeting the committed requirements." Inventory metrics should include inventory accuracy rate, cycle count variance, and inventory availability timing, because a SKU that is physically in the building is not useful if it is not received and stowed.

Receiving performance is the leading indicator that predicts outbound pain

Receiving is the start of the fulfillment pipeline. If inbound inventory sits on the dock, outbound has less available stock, and cycle time rises as orders wait. Receiving performance should therefore be a core e-commerce fulfillment metric, even if it feels like an internal operational detail.

Malmquist described receiving SLA timing in a way that belongs in every dashboard. "For receiving, the SLA is covers the time from the moment that we get a container on the dock with inventory in it, and how much time we have to count that in, and stow it away into the locations that we're going to pick from." When receiving is measured and managed, the business can plan promotions and replenishments with more confidence.

Carrier handoff timing separates warehouse performance from carrier performance

Many brands define shipped as the moment tracking moves. Many warehouses define shipped as the moment an order is completed. If you do not track both, you cannot tell whether a late delivery is a warehouse issue or a carrier issue.

Malmquist explained why he avoids the word shipped in some contexts. "The reason I don't say ship is because sometimes it will be marked as completed, but the carrier doesn't actually pick it up right away, but the tracking goes back to Shopify." E-commerce fulfillment metrics should include warehouse completion time, carrier acceptance time, and the delta between them, because that delta is where missed pickups and dock congestion hide.

B2B compliance metrics matter even for e-commerce brands

Many e-commerce brands expand into retail as they grow. That expansion introduces new compliance requirements and new penalties. If your fulfillment metrics set is built only for D2C, you will be surprised by the complexity and the cost of B2B noncompliance.

Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G10 Fulfillment, described why B2B shipping must be treated differently. "Our WMS system was written from day one around B2B, which is very different." He described what retailers require. "They have routing guides that make you specific labels on and put them in a specific place on the box, and you have to send EDI, ASN, electronic information in a timely fashion." Compliance metrics should track these milestones as pass or fail and on time or late, because a correct shipment can still be fined if the paperwork is wrong.

Why scan-based data is the engine behind trustworthy metrics

Metrics are only useful if the team trusts them. In a warehouse, the most trustworthy data comes from scans, because scans record physical events. Manual updates create timing gaps and disputes that turn KPIs into opinions.

Wright described what scan-based tracking looks like at a granular level. "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." He explained why that matters. "At any point in time, I know that Bobby has this product on fork 10 right now, and if I needed to go find that product, I just got to go find Bobby on fork 10." When your metrics are built from scan events, you can drill down from a KPI to a transaction trail, and you can fix processes with confidence.

Visibility turns metrics into action, not just reporting

A monthly report is not a management tool. Real-time visibility is. When brands can see order stages and KPIs during the day, they can adjust priorities, communicate proactively, and avoid cutoff misses. When they cannot, they are stuck waiting for answers while customers wait for shipments.

Milligan described what real-time portals change for customers. "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100% visibility." She also described the direct experience of that access. "They can actually watch those progressions going on." Perkins described the broader picture customers want. "Our clients get best-in-class visibility and transparency. They can see their daily orders, they can see KPIs, and they can see historical transactions." When customers and fulfillment teams can see the same truth, the conversation shifts from blame to improvement.

Where G10 fits if you want metrics that support growth

E-commerce fulfillment metrics should help you grow without turning operations into a daily fire drill. G10 focuses on scan-based execution, customer-facing visibility, and SLA-aligned reporting across receiving, outbound, and B2B compliance, so the numbers match what is happening on the floor. When a metric slips, the goal is to see it early and fix it fast, before customers feel it.

If you want to see what a strong metric set looks like for your specific business, ask for a walkthrough of the daily KPI view and an example drill-down into one exception case. You should be able to trace an order end-to-end, see where time and risk sit, and understand what happens during spikes, so you can spend less time worrying about fulfillment and more time building the business.