New ecommerce business are emerging out of the woodwork every day, making competition more fierce than ever. No matter what product or service you are selling you need to go above and beyond in improving the customer experience and making the company run as efficiently as possible.
Managing your supply chain is not an easy feat when there are so many moving parts involved, especially if you have yet to invest in an order management system (OMS). Small business owners often feel that a system or software for order management is not necessary. Maybe everything seems to be under control without the help of an OMS.
If you’re on the fence about investing in an order management system for your ecommerce business it is time to evaluate your business practices. Here are a few ways you can determine if it is time to invest in an OMS.
You use multiple sales channels
Multichannel selling means that you sell your product from a variety of selling platforms. It could also mean that you use different manufacturers and your product is spread throughout a variety of locations. Having multiple sales channels can make things extremely complicated, especially if you plan on doing everything by hand.
For example, a storeowner who only sells products through the brick-and-mortar retail location is considered a single-channel retailer. But selling things online can’t be this easy. With an online store you’re required to process custom orders, coordinate shipping from the appropriate location, track the order status, and relay all of the necessary information to the manufacturers/distributors.
An order management system can help you organize orders through every single sales channel that you use. When you sell your product on Amazon, through your personal website, and on Ebay an OMS will coordinate everything and make your life so much easier.
You have a lot of inventory
Managing inventory can be challenging for anyone especially if you have tons of inventory to account for. This is even more true when your inventory is not stored in one central location. Let an OMS do the work for you and figure out which warehouse each order should be shipped from.
You don’t enjoy manual data entry
OK, so who really enjoys data entry? Lucky for you you’ll never have to manually input data when you invest in an order management system. Most of the modern-day OMS softwares have automated data entry that work in real-time. Everything from customer order information to receipts management will get regular automatic updates with your OMS.
Your customers aren’t always satisfied
Maybe you are not getting the greatest feedback from your customers and client base. If this is the case you need to first determine why. Are they unhappy with the actual product? Or did they have a bad experience with the ordering process? A lot of customer dissatisfaction has to do with the overall shopping experience and long delivery times. If this is the case you can resolve it with the help of an OMS.
