A growing global trend in eCommerce is currently reshaping the online retail environment. Order management, order fulfillment processes as well as warehouse management have all been under more stress as a result of the surge in e-commerce sales.
Every new order starts a complicated sequence of events, starting with taking the payment and continuing with picking, packing, and sending it to the correct location.
In light of this, this post explains the eCommerce order management system. We also identify some ways you can improve the e-commerce order management procedure and give customers a better experience.
what-is-ecommerce-order-management
What does Ecommerce Order Management mean?
Ecommerce order management can be defined as the back-end operation for managing and processing online orders.
This can be summarised as the procedure of following orders from the beginning of the initial purchase through the whole fulfillment process until the time the customer gets their items. Information is gathered at each level so that the customer order’s lifecycle can be followed.
No matter the size, efficient order management is essential for all eCommerce businesses. It not only guarantees you keep the money you earn, but it also promotes customer loyalty as well as brand loyalty.
Minor mistakes can cut into the bottom line through returns, refunds, and reshipping expenses and also have long-term effects on your brand’s reputation.
At this point, you’ll need a strong order management system – an all-in-one solution for order management that will ensure that your customers (and inventory) are satisfied.
Order management system
Order management used to rely on cumbersome ERPs and manually updated spreadsheets. The brands and marketplace sellers of today cannot be supported by these antiquated systems and procedures.
Brands want flexible, adaptable, and scalable solutions to be competitive. They require operational technologies that can scale in response to demand and market changes. An order management system can help in this situation.
What is OMS in eCommerce?
Every step of the order journey is automated and integrated by order management systems (OMS). This enables businesses to offer standardized customer experiences at mass and across all channels.
Operators can handle orders coming in from various sales channels and leaving from various fulfillment points thanks to eCommerce order management systems. It aggregates data inside a single interface and allows automation among service providers.
The foundation of a successful order management strategy is real-time data. Today, retail data moves across a number of layers of operational infrastructure, technological platforms, and sales channels. It’s hard to depend on basic spreadsheets with this much data.
Order management solutions are becoming more and more important as organizations adopt multichannel retail.
How Does Order Management in E-Commerce Work?
The objective of order management for eCommerce is to provide a product to a customer as quickly as possible.
Each product in the customer’s order is managed throughout its entire route, from the time it is added to the cart to the time it is delivered to the customer’s door, as well as any subsequent returns.
The process for fulfilling orders
Every business has a different strategy for fulfilling orders. This may depend on the customers, the fulfillment sites, the returns policies, and the suppliers. Although procedures can differ, the following phases are typically involved in order fulfillment procedures:
- A customer places an order with the business.
- The business adds the order to its database.
- The customer is informed that the order has been received by the supplier.
- The closest warehouse or fulfillment facility receives the order.
- The order is taken from the rack by an employee.
- The business produces shipping labels and prepares the order for shipping.
- The order is sent by the business.
- A confirmation that the order is being shipped is sent to the customer.
- The purchase has been completed.
Systems for managing orders help with order fulfillment
The purpose of an order management system is to automate, optimize, and reduce the cost of the fulfillment process. These processes are streamlined to lower shipping and administrative expenses, improve the quality of the data, and pick and pack using the most effective manner.
The order management system can help lower shipping rates
Several order management systems also offer features that make processing credit cards and returns more efficient. To adjust to the approach you do company, the best system technology will interact with the top eCommerce platforms and tools.
The order management system for eCommerce can update your accounting software, create a bill, and create a shipping label whenever a customer makes a purchase. By communicating with your FBA, 3PL, or shipping providers, the eCommerce order management software can even track an order’s progress once it has been sent.
When an order has left a warehouse, your buyer can follow its travel to their front door. This is frequently made easier by the OMS.
Why do Ecommerce Order Management Systems matter?
Without an order management system in eCommerce, the majority of online businesses cannot expand. Customers demand prompt, economical, and customized order fulfillment. Manual error is not a possibility.
Instead of sorting through backorder SKUs, contacting carriers, or printing documents, staff members could be concentrating on improving the brand experience.
Indeed, there is a lot of possibility for error, as evidenced by the big list of departments engaged in proper order administration. Your order fulfillment rates or even customer satisfaction could suffer greatly if one detail is missed or improperly handled.
Poor order management systems may make it difficult to fulfill orders, cause orders to be sent or received later than planned or result in improper payment. After just one bad experience, 65% of customers are said to quit doing business with that company.
In the end, sustaining strong order management procedures entails maintaining the clientele that powers your company. Your consumers, finances, and general business model will operate as efficiently as feasible with effective order management.
The Process of Ecommerce Order Management: Step by Step
Offering a top-notch customer experience directs the order management lifecycle. An order management system works to satisfy customer requirements through order placement, shipment, and even refunds and returns.
1. Receiving an order
The most enjoyable element of the process is when a customer visits your online store and makes a purchase. Yet several steps need to go place behind the scenes before you actually spend that money.
- Processing of payments. Your payment procedure must be seamless, dependable, and secure. It’s crucial to pick a payment processor that accomplishes all of this and works well with your preferred OMS.
- Considering unusual orders. Certain orders demand extra care. Perhaps a consumer requested adjustments to the goods or paid for quick shipping. These must be communicated to the team managing the order so that they can make the necessary changes.
- Multichannel order merging. Most companies use an omnichannel sales strategy that includes social media, smartphones, desktops, and physical stores. An OMS can streamline this process to reduce hectic work and mistakes instead of relying on spreadsheets and manually maintaining these orders.
Receiving an order
All these essential activities and more are taken care of by the proper OMS tool. They build a connection that ensures your inventory management, online platform, and fulfillment staff are all up to date.
2. Fulfilling the order
An OMS will choose the best warehouse based on proximity to the order destination based on the order details. Based on predetermined conditions, the system will then automatically determine shipping rates and the best carriers.
Additionally, it might create shipping labels and packing slips, as well as inform your warehouse management system of any changes to the inventory levels.
3. Shipping the items
The customer can receive updates that their item has shipped from the order management system once the store picks, packs, and sends the goods. Based on their delivery address and order details, it can also let them know when to receive it.
You and the buyer can track the shipment as it travels to the destination, no it’s the customer’s home or a store location.
Shipping the items
To find the lowest delivery prices for your orders, try comparing fulfillment providers. Fulfillment centers can predict costs and delivery dates based on the kinds of products you offer since they operate with a variety of carriers.
4. Processing refunds and returns
Whether or not an unhappy buyer returns an item, a successful return and refund process can significantly contribute to mending relationships.
A refund request can be processed instantly by an order management system, which will also connect with your back-office operations to carry out the refund. In order to guarantee that data is correct and maintained as the process continues, it can also link to the returns provider.
Main Features of Successful Order Management
Different services are organized by an efficient e-commerce order management system to reduce the volume of manual tasks.
The following are some of the primary features it offers to retailers:
It connects with different business systems
The capacity of a decentralized order management system to interface with business infrastructure, supply chain systems, and service providers is a vital part.
The majority of order management solutions can be integrated with your accounting program, warehouses, inventory supervisor, customer service teams, and other systems. Order administration will be as simple and automatic as possible thanks to integrations with your existing systems.
Automation gets rid of manual processes
In this modern era, manual processes have been removed day by day. Manual processes are much riskier and cannot ever match the pace of order management software. Instead, an order management system automates processes, such as determining shipping prices and submitting fulfillment requests.
It offers a worldwide service
Our world is becoming more and more globalized. Every day, brands accept orders from outside their boundaries.
It offers a worldwide service
The majority of order management systems are capable of facilitating international e-commerce orders and transactions from any nation and currency. In addition to increasing a brand’s footprint, this enables them to gain knowledge and develop as a result of their achievements in new markets.
Reporting and predicting stock levels
To prevent overordering or, worse still, overselling, most order management systems can forecast the safety stock, which is crucial in holidays and other periods of unanticipated demand changes.
A merchant-fulfilled strategy can also be supported by an order management system that is linked to your inventory systems. You may have more freedom and authority over order management processes as a result.
It runs on all channels
Order management systems can serve customer needs on all e-commerce platforms as well as sales channels, including your online store, website, marketplaces, or any main sales channel you use to sell.
As your company grows, processing these sales through a single channel will become more and more difficult. Your team will become burned out and more prone to blunders without a mechanism to connect the sales orders and information from each channel, as each one uses its own login details and procedures.
All of your channels can be combined into one user experience using an order management system. Your team will spend far less time managing orders and onboarding new staff as a result.
By consolidating all the information you require into one easily accessible location based on real-time data, it will also reduce errors and give you a comprehensive view of orders and statistics.
Main Advantages of an eCommerce Order Management System
Eliminate manual tasks
An Order Management System’s primary advantage is that it helps your team to automate routine but important tasks like reporting, order processing, updating stock levels, but also return management.
Eliminate manual tasks
The majority of solid OMS solutions interface with all of your current eCommerce programs, so there’s no need for your staff to manually move data across applications.
Provide details about the best-selling inventory
Utilizing an OMS will also provide you with greater visibility into your most prominent SKUs and products.
Each platform on which you sell will be integrated by an OMS, putting your sales data together and ensuring its accuracy.
You can identify patterns in customer behavior over time and improve inventory strategic choices by using data.
Control the availability of products
The majority of multichannel eCommerce businesses today sell through online marketplaces, and others in addition to their primary store.
You can link each platform where you sell using an OMS. It will be simple for you to manage your stock levels throughout channels, alter individual SKU prices across channels, and monitor performance.
Increase employee experience
An order management system has a good effect on your employees in addition to eliminating manual processes. They won’t have to speed up labor-intensive manual operations to handle increased demand as your company expands. They may concentrate their efforts on what really matters—your consumers.
An order management system’s greater efficiency will be welcomed by the staff as well. The solution will enable employees to perform better work by providing continuous updates and linking that data throughout the supply chain.
Boost customer satisfaction
An efficient order management system will interact with your fulfillment facility and provide your clients with near-real-time updates on the progress of their orders.
Boost customer satisfaction
By having your OMS determine which fulfillment facilities are nearest to your customers and processing orders from that place to ensure that your customers receive their products as soon as possible, you can also shorten shipping times.
Enhance scalability of systems
Every aspect of your business operations will change as it grows.
You’ll require brand-new warehouses. modern accounting programs. Partnering with a third-party fulfillment (3PL) partner could be your first step.
You won’t have sufficient time to concentrate on what you’re good at expanding your business if you physically integrate all of your systems, design your own connections in-house, or employ manual data transmission.
Because it will integrate with your current eCommerce software stack and connect all of your important systems, an OMS can aid in scalability.
Your tools will help your company stay organized and run efficiently as you expand, guaranteeing that your customers receive the same excellent level of support regardless of where they place their orders.
Summary
With the help of an eCommerce order management system, you can automate routine but important business operations and stay informed at all times about the state of your company.
There are many things to take into account before selecting one. Think about the main components you require from it before you get in. Finding a platform that provides exactly what you require may then be done backward.
After your operations of the company are connected with an OMS, you’ll get a clear picture of everything that is happening in your organization, be able to precisely measure and estimate sales volume, and make sure your fulfillment commitments are kept.
