An order management system is a software platform online companies use to monitor sales, inventory, and customer orders. The solution enables them to automate the internal processes necessary to ensure their products reach the end-users. These include them to-
- Accept online orders from customers from multiple sale channels and the payment for these purchases,
- Issue instructions to warehouse personnel or third-party logistic providers to fulfill the online customer orders,
- Update stock levels in the system and across the sales channels to denote the completion of the sale,
- Generate a tracking number for the customer service personnel and online buyers to monitor the online orders,
- Show real-time inventory levels on demand to ensure timely purchases so as to avert stock-out scenarios, and
- Provide details of the back-office accounting teams to generate invoices, accept payments, update the other ledgers.
Why do online companies need a web-based order management system?
Online companies often find that manually processing customer orders using MS Excel spreadsheets is not feasible as e-commerce operations expand. Their employees spend a considerable amount of time entering the relevant data into independent business software solutions. In many cases, they have to record the same information into two separate software platforms. This unintentionally results in numerous avoidable clerical errors. These include entering the wrong customer address, product description, quantity, or shipping details. Moreover, tracking online orders’ progress can be a mammoth task for the customer service personnel. In this situation, companies should seriously consider operating an order management system using web-based cloud technology.
The online companies should seriously consider installing and operating a webbased order management system when:
- Their employees are struggling to process more than 50 online customer orders in one day,
- Managing the online customer order entries from multiple sale channels is becoming problematic,
- Fulfilling the online customer orders involves working with numerous third-party logistic providers,
- Critical errors often occur when employees record data relating to product description, customer addresses, or shipping details,
- The long processing time to fulfill online orders is adversely affecting the customers’ buying experience,
- Slow delivery time of the products that an online customer purchases are leading to a loss of revenue.
Advantages of an order management system
Operating an order management system using the latest web-based cloud-technology for online companies-
- Ensures the proper automation and streamlining of online order processing workflow to boost customer engagement,
- Centralizes the processing of customer orders into a single system to minimize the occurrence of errors,
- Allows the customer service team to provide real-time updates to online buyers on the status of their orders,
- Minimizes costs of operating separate accounting, warehouse, and inventory management software systems, and
- Provides them with greater control of the online data coming from various sales channels, and
Operating a suitable webbased order management system enables online companies to enhance their customers’ buying experience. In the process, these corporate enterprises’ top executives see an increase in online sales and revenue. However, the software platform they install should be user-friendly and adopt the latest cloud-based technology. The system should integrate easily into their existing IT infrastructure and be compatible with their current business solution at an affordable cost.