A few too many late nights in December made me realise it was time to get some help with the operations of my fledgling ecommerce business. Here's the story of how my business partners and I went about finding that help - known as 'ecommerce fulfilment'. There were plenty of factors we considered - and some we didn't.

You might think the main concerns of a fulfilment company would be things like costs, logistics and storage capacity. To improve a business, you can spend a lot of time trying to optimise any or all of these. But what if there was something else which made improving all of these things that much easier?

You did your research, shortlisted fulfilment partners, and finally decided to outsource your ecommerce operations. 'Set it and forget it', right? Not quite. There's something you still need to do - build and maintain a relationship.