4 Tips for effective Order Management

Trust me you don't require a degree or certificate in any “Management” course for effective order management. In this era of digitization and eCommerce, some intelligent moves would be sufficient for satisfying your online customers order successfully.

Today because of the advancement of technology sellers are able to access their order from multiple touch points. Therefore, it becomes crucial to adopt the technology for managing and order processing accurately, if you are looking to give a tough competition.

If you are looking for ideas to improve your existing order fulfillment system, the following tips are for you to help with effective order management.

Customer or Order Segmentation

For effective management of orders initially, you require an order management software that has the functionality of organizing or segmenting your orders/customers.

Segmentation means grouping or categorizing the specific orders/customers so that you can dynamically display the content and promotions to specific customers – based on properties such as customer address, order history, shopping cart etc.

Customer or Order segmentation is a way of personalizing your marketing messages to better communicate with different groups of customers. You must consider the following factors for segmentation while choosing an order management software:

• Integrations: The software should have integrations with all the other eCommerce platforms and marketplaces (i.e Shopify, Amazon, eBay)

• Analytics and Reports: Should be able to generate the segmented report of each customer or order.

• Flexibility and Scalability: Your business is probably going to grow and shift over time. Choosing an order management software let you analyze the information from each of these segments and use that data to develop applicable methods for everyone is something you must hunt.

• Cost: Investing in an order management software nowadays has become a necessity. Remember, that some of the cheaper order management software available is not robust. Thus implementing the tool which is cost effective

Real-time Order Processing & Tracking

Real-time order processing tracking of the order greatly increase customer satisfaction and improve the overall perception of your store’s brand. How?

This is the functionality which not all order management software provides. Although it has proven to be profitable for most businesses that have made use of it.

With the help of order management software, you as a seller get the detailed insights of :

• When the order is created
• Order processing (i.e  checking availability)
• Picking and Packaging
• Shipping
• Delivery

Real-time tracking adds clarity by arming you with information and alerts on when items are shipped, estimated delivery dates, current location and notifications of delays. Hence you can plan what’s the next step to be taken for order fulfillment.

Location-based Warehousing

The product can be anywhere in the warehouse. Identifying and picking up your product from a large warehouse happens to be a clumsy task.

Order fulfillment process can be made more efficient if the inventory in the warehouse could be found easily by your pickup person. Some order management software also provides the feature of knowing where exactly the inventory is located in the warehouse.

These order management software also give you the insights of which product are near expiry or are in the warehouse for a long (unsold/old-stock). Thus not only your order but also the inventory in the warehouse would also get managed eventually.

Optimizing Returns and Refunds

Order management is not always about the one-way process. You also have to think about the reverse process. That means you need to analyze how you can manage the reverse logistics and payment refunds.

Also, consumers prefer the websites that have a liberal returns policy, one that is simple and easy to navigate. Integrating your business with an excellent order management software surely help you reduce the hassle of dealing with unqualified returns request and save enough time and costs.

Never let yourself feel relaxed if your order management software is handling all the returns and refunds seamlessly, understand the root cause of returns and try to resolve the issue.

Make sure that your every product page has got a return and refund policy. It is highly recommended that you work with the suppliers that accept returns and replacements as a part of their system.

Wrapping it

Managing order effectively is a key for the growth of a business. And today eCommerce industry is growing and changing in pace that no could have ever imagined.

Thus by leveraging the modern technology and bit of human intelligence or tips that are mentioned above order management is not a contrary job.

However, adopting technology that suits business needs and implementing a cloud-based order management software, online retailers can reduce potential errors, while improving overall efficiency.