Boosting productivity and increasing revenue always sounds great. But what does multi-channel order aggregation with global visibility to inventory, delivery, and service availability really look like? Here are a few advantages that order management offers:

• Simplifies customer orders by allowing users to access, modify, or change a line item in an entire order.
• Provides call center representatives with real-time access to order, inventory, and delivery information. This leads to faster resolution time for customer inquiries and increased customer satisfaction.
• Allows you to query inventory at any location to fill orders from the optimal location or vendor. This reduces shipping costs and expedites delivery times.
• Ability to monitor cycle times and identify bottlenecks to streamline order processing.
• Capture customer data at the beginning of the relationship to eliminate asking for repeat information at different phases.
• Identify product flaws to reduce returns and cancellations.
• Ability to monitor stock levels to ensure you’re meeting quantity demands.

This type of single repository for order information can automate the fulfillment process, ensure accuracy, and create a smooth customer experience.

Should you be using order management? 

Depending on the needs and complexity of the company, order management can be just one feature of business software, or a powerful standalone solution that integrates with additional systems. The type of products, degree of customization, price quotes, and your audience will dictate the appropriate software solution for your business.

A retail store may simply require a POS with order management features, while a large operation might need to integrate order management with either customer relationship management (CRM), project portfolio management (PPM), supply chain management (SCM) – or all three.

If you’re not currently using an order management system or software with this feature, here are a few signs that it’s time to start looking for one:

• Having a central database would significantly reduce time spent each day searching for information.
• You are manually printing labels, invoices, and notifying customers of updates.
• Customers are receiving the wrong orders, experiencing delays, and having payment or billing issues that can’t be resolved swiftly.
• You need a better handle on cash flow management.
• You don’t know what inventory you have or which products in your store are selling best.

Of course, these are not the only issues that suggest a software need – and having a system in place won’t automatically solve all the problems above.

Order management starts the moment a buy button is clicked. If you can’t answer specific inventory, administration, and shipping questions, then it may be time to upgrade to a system that can.

Author: rohit kumar

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