Why Working with Multiple Suppliers Costs Your Campaign Money and Time
Many retail marketers work with separate parties for printing, storage, and distribution. That seems efficient, but the coordination burden and hidden costs add up.
In this guide, you'll discover the real impact of fragmented fulfillment and how integrated solutions make your campaigns more effective and more cost-efficient.
The True Costs of Fragmented Fulfillment
When you work with multiple parties for your POS campaigns, the costs are often much higher than you think. In addition to the direct invoices from printer, warehouse, and distributor, hidden costs quietly accumulate.
Direct Costs
Double Transportation Costs
Every additional transfer point in your supply chain means extra transportation costs. From printer to warehouse, from warehouse to distributor, and ultimately to your stores. Research shows that companies working with multiple logistics providers experience 39.5% higher overall costs due to fragmented services and lack of economies of scale.
Increased Handling Fees
At every transfer between parties, you pay handling fees. Your materials are unpacked, checked, repacked, and moved. These extra operations not only cost money but also increase the risk of damage. On average, the retail sector loses 1.44% of inventory through shrinkage, with handling errors accounting for a substantial share.
Expedited Shipping Due to Miscommunication
When communication between printer, warehouse, and distributor isn't synchronized, rush deliveries are often the only solution. These last-minute solutions can double or even triple your costs. Research shows that 34% of retailers shipped an order late because they sold an out-of-stock product—a direct result of poor inventory coordination between multiple parties.
Hidden Costs
Your Time: 6-8 Hours of Coordination Per Campaign
The biggest hidden cost is your own time. On average, a retail marketer spends 6 to 8 hours per campaign coordinating between different suppliers. Phone calls, emails, status updates, resolving miscommunications—it adds up. At an average hourly rate of $75 per hour, this means $450 to $600 in coordination costs per campaign, costs that can be completely avoided with one integrated partner.
Missed Deadlines: 45% Delay
Fragmented fulfillment leads to delayed campaigns. Research from Gartner shows that 45% of all product launches are delayed by at least one month. For retail campaigns, this means direct revenue loss. Every day of delay is a day less of sales, a day when your competitor is already in the store.
B2B campaigns experience similar problems: it takes an average of 44 days before a lead generation campaign goes live. That's six weeks during which your competitors can capture market share.
Inventory Loss: Handling Errors
At every transfer between parties, the risk of errors increases. Wrong quantities, damaged materials, incorrectly stored products—they're all consequences of fragmented processes. 63% inventory accuracy is the reality in American retail operations. That means more than one in three times your inventory numbers are incorrect, leading to emergency orders, overstocking, or stockouts.
Additionally, 62% of companies report that their finances are directly impacted by shortcomings in inventory tracking—a problem amplified when multiple parties each use their own systems.
Quality Issues Discovered Too Late
When your printed materials go directly to a warehouse and you only discover during distribution to stores that the colors are wrong or the format is incorrect, it's too late. With integrated fulfillment, quality controls are performed in one continuous process, so problems are immediately identified and resolved.
Common Problems with Fragmented Fulfillment
Problem 1: Timing Mismatch
Your printer delivers on time, but the warehouse has no space available. Result? Your campaign materials remain in temporary (more expensive) storage for weeks, or worse: they get lost or damaged during the extra move.
Real-world impact: An electronics chain ordered POS materials for a new product launch. The printer delivered perfectly on time, but the warehouse had no capacity due to another customer. The materials had to go to an external storage location, resulting in $1,200 in extra storage costs and three days' delay in distribution to 85 stores.
Problem 2: Systems Out of Sync
Your distributor plans a delivery based on inventory numbers from their system, but those numbers don't match what's actually in the warehouse. Result? Emergency deliveries, frustrated store managers, and extra costs.
Real-world impact: A survey among logistics professionals shows that 31.75% experience coordination and communication problems when working with multiple transport and logistics providers. These problems arise from different technology platforms that don't communicate with each other.
Problem 3: Post-Production Changes
Your campaign needs to be adjusted—a price change, a new promotion period, a modified visual. But your materials have already been produced and stored at a third party. Making changes means new production, new transport, and meanwhile the old materials lie worthless in the warehouse.
Real-world impact: With integrated fulfillment, you have one point of contact who oversees what's still in production, what's in storage, and what's already distributed. Changes can often still be implemented before materials are shipped.
The Benefits of Integrated Fulfillment
Single Point of Contact
Instead of switching between printer, warehouse, and distributor, you have one contact person who oversees the entire process. This person knows your campaigns, understands your timelines, and can proactively identify problems before they escalate.
Scientific evidence: A study published in PLOS One shows that full integration of supply chains increases successful disruption mitigation by two-thirds compared to fragmented supply chains.
Real-Time Inventory Visibility
With one integrated system, you know exactly how many materials are in production, how many are in storage, and how many have already been distributed. No more surprises, no miscommunications, just real-time insight into your campaign materials.
Shorter Lead Times
Every intermediate step you eliminate is time gained. From briefing to distribution can be 30-40% faster with integrated fulfillment than with fragmented processes. That means you can respond more quickly to market changes and stay ahead of competitors.
Lower Total Costs
By eliminating double transport, handling fees between parties, and administrative overhead, the total costs of integrated fulfillment are structurally lower. Even if the cost price per component is comparable, you save significantly on coordination and hidden costs.
Example Calculation: Traditional vs. Integrated
Let's compare a concrete campaign to illustrate the difference.
Traditional Setup (3 Separate Parties)
| Cost Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Printing (POS materials for 70 stores) | $5,000 |
| Storage (3 months inventory) | $800 |
| Distribution (70 stores, 2 deliveries) | $2,500 |
| Transport between parties (printer → warehouse → distributor) | $600 |
| Coordination time (8 hours × $75/hour) | $600 |
| Total | $9,500 |
Integrated Fulfillment (1 Party)
| Cost Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| All-in fulfillment (production, storage, distribution) | $7,800 |
| Coordination time (2 hours × $75/hour) | $150 |
| Total | $7,950 |
Savings per campaign:
And this is without factoring in the costs of delays, quality issues, or inventory loss.
Calculate Your Own Savings
Want to know how much you can save by switching to integrated fulfillment? Use our calculator to get an indication of your potential cost reduction.
Fulfillment Cost Calculator
Your Potential Savings
Your potential annual savings:
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This is an indicative calculation based on market averages. For an exact savings calculation based on your specific situation, please contact one of our fulfillment experts.
Is Integrated Fulfillment Right for You?
Use this checklist to determine if integrated fulfillment offers benefits for your organization:
3 or more checkmarks? Then integrated fulfillment can save you significant savings and headaches.
The Hidden Cost of Waiting
Every campaign you run with fragmented fulfillment costs you more than necessary. Not only in direct costs, but also in time, energy, and missed opportunities. The longer you wait to integrate your fulfillment process, the more unnecessary costs you incur.
Example calculation: costs over 12 months
Assume: you run 12 campaigns per year with an average savings of $1,550 per campaign with integrated fulfillment.
- Year 1 savings: $18,600
- Year 2 savings: $18,600 (cumulative: $37,200)
- Year 3 savings: $18,600 (cumulative: $55,800)
Delaying three years means $55,800 in unnecessary costs. And this is without counting the value of your time, the stress of coordination, and the opportunities you miss due to delays.
Ready to Optimize Your Fulfillment Costs?
Integrated fulfillment not only saves you money but also time, stress, and ensures smoother campaigns. No more ping-pong between suppliers, no surprises, just one partner who oversees your entire process.
Service Bureau Jansen offers you 100 years of experience in printing and fulfillment, all from a single source. From production to storage to distribution to every store.
Contact Us for a Detailed AnalysisSources
- Averitt (2024). The Road to Efficiency: From Fragmentation to Integration in Logistics. Available at: https://www.averitt.com/blog/the-road-to-efficiency
- National Retail Federation (2021). Retail Shrinkage Statistics. Via Loomis US: https://www.loomis.us/resources/insights/
- BlueCart (2025). What Is Shrinkage: How to Calculate Inventory Shrinkage. Available at: https://www.bluecart.com/blog/inventory-shrinkage
- MRPeasy (2024). Inventory Shrinkage – Causes, Consequences, and Tips. Available at: https://www.mrpeasy.com/blog/inventory-shrinkage/
- Procurement Tactics (2025). Inventory Management Statistics - 30 Key Figures. Available at: https://procurementtactics.com/inventory-management-statistics/
- Gartner (2019). Survey Finds That 45% of Product Launches Are Delayed by at Least One Month. Available at: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/
- Marketing Vogue (2025). The Impact of Campaign Speed-to-Market on Your Bottom Line. Available at: https://marketingvogue.com/
- Asana (2025). Campaign Management is Broken. Here's How to Fix it. Available at: https://asana.com/resources/campaign-management-challenges
- Ilin, C., et al. (2020). Fragmentation of production amplifies systemic risks from extreme events in supply-chain networks. PLOS One. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article
- NetSuite (2024). Supply Chain Fragmentation Explained. Available at: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/erp/
- Epicor (2024). What is Supply Chain Fragmentation? Available at: https://www.epicor.com/en/blog/supply-chain-management/