Order management is an ecosystem of sorts that integrates every task and activity involved in taking and filling orders, including the various interrelated functions that need to work together for the whole order management process to run fluently.
Customers expect a seamless shopping experience at the exact moment when they hit the enter button to place an order from a brand, at that period, customers expect timely receipt of the goods they purchased.
To facilitate this streamlined customer experience, businesses must ensure that they are effectively managing these subsequent stages of the e-commerce order management or multichannel order management process:
1. Receiving the orders
While placing an order, more than 60 percent of buyers desire to ascertain the status of a retailer’s inventory level. So, if your sales channels aren’t managed or synced from one single platform, you're unable to offer consumers real-time inventory level reports.
It might also feel like you're running a separate business and you set yourself in danger of overselling. By managing orders for the purpose of sale, you're in a position to process orders more quickly and speed up dispatch times.
Reduce the danger of overselling by tracking and recording your inventory across multiple channels. This suggests you aren’t handling orders that you simply can’t fill because of stockouts, nor will you miss out on large orders because your stock isn’t split between the various channels.
2. Picking, packing, and shipping
The picking, packing, and shipping are the stages where there are high chances for a mistake to occur. In this stage, and even minute silly mistakes can add up. Picking errors are often costly. They not only result in product returns, but they also mess with stock levels. The additional time required to reprocess orders can impact loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Customers also don’t want the hassle to return the items. But if you do prefer to let go of the return, you lose inventory that was considered to be a source of revenue. Automating the process of picking should keep errors to a minimum level – by using different tools like a barcode scanner to enhance the accuracy level.
3. Delivery of orders
The most crucial and final stage in successful order management processing is delivering the order successfully to the customers. Accurate and fast delivery will make most of the consumers feel positive and happy about shopping with your brand or company again.
Considering the fact that more than 50 percent of buyers or shoppers see the fast delivery option as a top priority in their list, choosing one retailer over the other, solely because they provide more delivery options and that they would prefer to stick with a business if it offered a sense of loyalty with free next day or two-day delivery options.
Multichannel order management
Ecommerce Order Management or Multichannel Order Management is a challenge for all rapidly growing businesses. A company experiencing potentially high-growth must concentrate on managing high volumes of orders across multiple channels, with delivering exceptional good customer service.
Where manual Ecommerce Order Management processes sufficed, high volume order processing requires a scalable solution to avoid inefficiencies, time-consuming mistakes, lost sales, and poor services to the customer. Streamline order fulfillment activities by merging order management processes with inventory tracking systems, shipping, and fulfillment.
Consolidate your online stores and marketplaces in one platform that syncs and tracks your entire inventory levels across all channels providing buyers with accurate order status and total visibility in all orders.
You may also read this related blog - Top 8 Latest Trends in Multichannel Retail