7 Order Management Best Practices for Retailers
By Multidev Technologies · PUBLISHED March 21, 2022
As the retail marketplace continues to evolve, savvy retailers are investing in next-gen order management solutions to ensure they can reduce the time in the order-to-cash cycle and improve order processing efficiency for suppliers and wholesalers.
Today’s consumers demand fast, seamless, and accurate ordering and convenient delivery options. They also expect access to real-time inventory and order visibility. Effective order management is vital to ongoing retail success, and you can save time, money, and hassle with these seven order management best practices.
1. Real-time inventory tracking and management
Order management systems (OMS) can predict how much stock you’ll need to avoid over-ordering, or worse, over-selling. This is important during peak times. Overselling can cause you to lose sales, harm your standing with online marketplaces, and permanently damage your brand’s reputation.
An order management system that integrates into your inventory gives you more visibility and complete control over inventory management. Ensure your chosen OMS can automatically sync your stock levels, allowing each of your sales channels to remain up-to-date.
2. Reduction of Human Error with automation
We all make mistakes, especially if we’re taking orders with one system, printing shipping labels with another, and personally coordinating between your supplier or shipping departments. Automation can save time, reduce errors, and improve inventory accuracy. Retailers must spend as much time as they can on winning new customers and serving existing ones.
The back-office processes involved with order management are often time-consuming. With the right OMS, a retail business can automate a great many of those. With automation software handling data entry and more, your staffs are free for more complex tasks, and you can save your time and cost.
3. Re-analyze your packaging process
if your inventory data shows that certain products aren’t selling as well as they should or are being returned at a high rate, you can figure out why. The majority of the returns are not the consumer’s fault; it might be a reason for Damaged items or receiving the wrong items. You can prevent these issues by analyzing your packaging and shipping process.
You might decide to remove products from your store or improve the product photos or descriptions to increase sales. Taking time to fix the problems before they happen can prevent costly returns and damage to your store’s brand. You need to develop a strategy for handling returned items and moving them back into your inventory or disposing of them.
4. Multichannel management
In today’s retail landscape, customers expect a cohesive omnichannel retail experience. You can ensure that their experience is consistent with automated order entry, processing, and shipment tracking software.
An order management system can integrate all channels into one user interface. This will drastically reduce the time for your staff’s fulfilling orders and training new staff. It will also give you a clear-cut view of orders and data and reduce errors by centralizing all the information you need into one accessible place based on real-time data.
5. Superior Customer Experience
Today’s customers expect efficient, cost-effective, and personalized order fulfillment. The most significant benefit of an order management system is its positive effect on the customer experience. An order management system is ultimately designed to get the product to the customer faster, reduce errors, and provide a more personalized customer experience. When you invest in next-gen order management solutions, your customers will also experience the benefits.
The best OMS can aid customer experience in a range of ways. It allows customer service agents to reply to queries about order status more easily. Provide more accurate shipping and delivery information and ensure all products are always marked in or out of stock correctly.
6. Train your staff
Educate your staff on the ins and outs of your order management system. It requires many different pieces, people, and processes; train your staff members to interact with the software tools and handle common customer services issues.
Your customers rely on you for efficient order fulfillment and delivery. Empower your staff to make things right for your customers, and they will also appreciate the increased efficiency of an order management system. Delivering real-time information and integrating that data across the supply chain empowers employees to perform better.
7. Robust order management software
Choose the modern, integrated, and customized order management software for your company’s success and win your competitors.
Make sure you have the following features in your OMS.
- fully integrated with accounting and inventory management tools and merge customer service with order management and fulfillment systems
- It can be customized to your business and scale alongside your company.
- Deploy centralized order management
- Provide real-time stock and order visibility
- real-time data facilitates accurate forecasting and planning for the future
- Handle orders efficiently with integrated workflows and automated inventory processes
An innovative order management system is the way of the future in the retail world. It’s the best way to provide the fast, personalized, and error-free order fulfillment experience customers have come to expect. As a retailer, you constantly have to think faster, more personalized, and more modern.
ChainDrive is the ultimate order management software for multichannel retail businesses. It seamlessly integrates all your channels, stock locations, and order workflows in one centralized order management system.