A customer’s journey with your brand begins when they buy a product from you. Once the order is placed, the warehousing staff picks the relevant product, packs it, and ships it to the customer. The process is straightforward when you are a new business and receive only a few orders. You can quickly pick, pack, and ship your orders.
However, challenges arise when your business grows, and you receive a high number of orders. Here, an order management system can come in handy and help fulfill orders on time and efficiently.
In this blog, we will discuss what order management is and how it benefits your online business.
What is Order Management?
The order management process starts when a customer makes a purchase from you. It involves picking, packing, and shipping products to the end consumer. The process includes updating customer and inventory data, printing shipping labels, routing, and managing order returns.
No matter how many orders you receive in a day or month, you must manage and ship them as quickly as possible. A streamlined process will help offer a premium customer experience and increase profitability with increased operational efficiency.
Importance of Order Management for Your Business
A capable order management system is quintessential to performing order fulfillment operations efficiently and staying ahead of the competition. Let us take a look at the importance and benefits of an order management system:
Low Inventory Costs
Low inventory cost is one of the key benefits of an order management system. Automated inventory management helps manage inventory in a better way and also eliminates human errors. Automation updates the inventory whenever an order is shipped, or a product is returned or damaged. You can locate inventory quickly and replenish it on time.
An inventory management software also provides insights into the product/inventory in hand – this helps you keep a tab on your inventory, manage and store it better, and make informed decisions. You can also easily access their expiry or use-by dates and pick the products accordingly.
Well-Organized Warehousing Operations
An intelligent order management system also helps manage warehousing operations efficiently. You get an overview of the warehousing space, inventory stored, and all such related information at any time. Thus, you can make smarter decisions and keep ahead of your competition.
Avoid Stockout Situations
Maintaining a manual record of the inventory is a daunting task. Any human error can lead to unhappy customers, harming your business’s reputation in the market. This can also lead to stressed employees, hampering their performance. An order management system will help manage stock and provide you with up-to-date information. Updated stock levels also help avoid overstocking or understocking.
Ship Orders Faster
With an order management system, you can monitor your orders in real-time, i.e., you are notified as and when you receive an order. Thus, you can process them quickly and dispatch them faster. Besides, you can also track the progress of other outstanding orders seamlessly. If need be, you can also pull-out order history as well.
Integrate All Sales Channel
You must sell your products on different sales channels to rule the market. Managing orders on multiple sales channels and marketplaces can be challenging, increasing the chances of delays in order processing. One of the best capabilities of an order management system is its API integration feature.
You can integrate all your sales channels and automate workflows to save time and effort. This also helps decrease the risk of human errors. You can manage and process all orders from different sales channels on one platform with channel integration. You need not log on to other channels; you can access all information on a single platform and conveniently take the necessary action.
Customized Reports
With all data in one place, you can get customized reports at one place to check order trends and related information. With the availability of multiple formats, like PDF, Google Sheets, Excel (XLSV), and CSV, you can download the files in your preferred format to get a better understanding of the data.
Make Well-Informed Decisions
Using the data, you can make well-informed decisions. Having complete visibility of your business on a centralized platform helps you know which products are selling more and which are not. You can also make decisions regarding marketing campaigns, inventory levels, etc. You can reduce errors and improve performance by reducing or automating admin tasks.
Conclusion
Investing in an order management system only makes more sense with the benefits discussed above. It will help save costs, reduce human efforts, and positively impact your brand’s overall customer experience.
