Play this scenario in your head. While at a meeting with one of your partners or suppliers, your e-commerce manager incessantly calls you on the phone. They panic because your customer service representatives are threatening to quit because of the intensive workload and stress brought about by the several customer complaints about order fulfillment. Now, you blame yourself for not acquiring the best order management software, or worst of all, your e-commerce business still doesn’t have an OMS. Isn’t that the worst thing that could happen to your business?
Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market is growing nonstop, with over $99.7 billion in gross merchandise value in 2022, and expected to increase further by 2023 and beyond. The growth is exciting for merchants, but the more orders come, the more challenging it is to fulfill them efficiently. Order fulfillment will become even more difficult as the global supply chain grows more interconnected. Retailers invest in more diverse omnichannel fulfillment techniques to anticipate and meet shifting consumer expectations and behaviors.
Inventory visibility—knowing how much inventory you have and where it is located in your supply chain—and inventory management has never been more crucial. Deploying the best order management software (OMS) puts you steps ahead of your competitors.
What is an Order Management System (OMS)?
An OMS is a tool used to organize, control, and follow orders as they are fulfilled. This software also offers real-time order status information from the point of sale through last-mile delivery.
Order management systems simplify real-time inventory and order management, providing complete visibility into the retail fulfillment process. They create a data repository, collecting information as customer orders and inventory levels impact each other.
The best order management software can provide fulfillment reporting and insights. It benefits retailers and distributors who want to track essential business performance indicators. You can monitor order fill times and fulfillment costs like picking, packaging, and shipping using cutting-edge OMS platforms. It even tracks rates of product flaws and returns. Monitoring these KPIs is the first step in finding inefficiencies and creating a strategy to fix them.
Why You Need the Best Order Management Software
E-commerce growth has created opportunities for businesspeople to enter the market. Because the market is beginning to saturate, consumers now have many choices. Thus, we can easily compare e-commerce platforms, especially regarding order fulfillment, arrival, and returns.
Customers remember every experience they have in each e-commerce platform they use. Unfortunately, humans are naturally programmed to focus on the negative. Every good deed is forgotten, while every bad deed is emphasized or, worse, exaggerated. If a purchase goes wrong because of human or software error, the customer will spread the word and might even complain to business and trade governing bodies.
According to a survey by Parcel Perform and iPrice Group, 35% of Southeast Asian consumers have been disappointed with their e-commerce order experience for the past few years. E-commerce stores in Malaysia get the worst ratings, followed by Vietnam and Indonesia.
In January 2023, a local Philippine advocacy group, Digital Pinoys, complained to the country’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) about extreme delivery delays at one of the country’s biggest online stores. In turn, the DTI warned the online store and other big e-commerce chains in the Philippines that if the complaints and cases remain unresolved, your business’s best order management software will pay penalties of up to P300,000 (approximately $5,500).
Using your business’s best order management software, you and your team can track orders and shipments at every stage, from processing to delivery and delivery complaints. Here are more concrete reasons why it can help you serve your customers best:
Order Tracking
Merchants require the capacity to respond quickly to incoming orders and check the warehouse for item availability. As demands increase, things become much more challenging, especially if they originate from various sales channels.
An OMS is designed to integrate easily with your supply chain technology stack, allowing you to consolidate all order and inventory data. Using an OMS, you and your team can track orders and shipments at every stage, from processing to delivery.
Real-time order tracking promotes trust and lessens customer support requests regarding order and shipment progress. It also makes your team focus on more urgent responsibilities.
Order History and Data Analysis
An OMS will track and compile historical order information, which you may utilize to manage your inventory more effectively. Using this data type, you can generate reports on trends and seasonality, helping you estimate demand more precisely. After analyzing the data, you may decide how much of each SKU to restock based on past demand and anticipated sales.
Optimization and Automation
Optimizing the order management procedure will help you save time and money by avoiding many hassles as your business operations expand. You may decrease the likelihood of human error and improve order accuracy by cutting back on manual labor and time-consuming tasks.
An OMS and other automated systems can help you lower your error rate by centralizing all the information and data about your orders. If a problem occurs, such as a wrong mailing address, it’s easy to locate the order, contact the consumer, and fix it.
Customer Satisfaction and Feedback
Having the best order management software is advantageous in many aspects of the shipping and fulfillment process. Customers like tracking the progress of their orders and whether they arrive on time. The happier your customers are, the more they recommend your e-commerce platform to their family and friends. An OMS can thus assist you in several ways with client satisfaction.
Five Must-Have Features of the Best Order Management Software
Choosing your company’s best order management software can be challenging. Business owners and operations managers will want to look out for essential features. If you’re thinking about purchasing an OMS, here are the things to consider:
1. Real-Time Order Tracking
By providing real-time information along the order’s route, an OMS can aid in optimizing your eCommerce order tracking system. This is the most fundamental requirement for an order management system. Your software must accurately depict what items you have and where they are located. It must reflect real-time stock movements or allocations made by your business. Real-time order tracking should be easily accessible by both you and your clients. When consumers inquire about the status of their orders, you (and they) can follow their whereabouts and quickly determine where the order is. This feature is convenient for informing customers of each stop their order takes. It’s incredible help with shipping international orders and dealing with customs
2. Inventory Management
Customers should be able to see a product’s availability before placing an order. This means that your inventory management system and OMS must work effectively together. The customer must be aware of the stock availability. To avoid disappointment, they would prefer to know when the product will be replenished if it is out of stock. Today’s eCommerce companies hold stock in numerous locations. Tracking inventory levels with an OMS platform can be manageable. Overstocking and overselling can negatively influence your supply chain and profit margin. This gets more noticeable as your firm grows in scale. A quality OMS will provide real-time stock level updates, providing you peace of mind that your clients are receiving excellent service.
3. Analytics & Insights
The more your company expands, the more difficult it will be to oversee all your operations. The best order management software makes it simpler to examine the data, letting you view all order and inventory data in one area. It also helps business leaders make informed decisions regarding various sales channels, manufacturers, and fulfillment sites. The best order management software offers details about customers’ geographic locations to assist you in optimizing your shipping strategy. With this knowledge, you can choose the best product allocation strategy, effectively distributing inventory following client demand and geography.
4. Returns Management
Returns are unavoidable when doing business online, so you should optimize the process as much as possible. Customers come first, so consider them when updating inventory levels. A streamlined and straightforward returns process on your OMS can increase sales for your company. Though it may initially seem unrelated, 67% of consumers research the return policy before purchasing. Having instant alerts for customer returns is a big thing for response times. Managing returns through a dashboard is easier. You can see all orders at once and even sort them by status. A dedicated “returns” section on the dashboard allows you to generate and track all returns. That includes comprehensive order details and the ID of the returned item.
5. Ease of Use
The last thing you would want is to spend money on a comprehensive order management system only to find it challenging to set up and use. While not a specific feature per se, you’ll require a user-friendly and intuitive approach. It should also be sufficiently customizable so that you can suit the particular needs of your business. You’ll already have too much on your plate as a business owner, but the difficulties of an order management system would make matters worse. Selecting software that reduces your stress while optimizing your business procedures is vital.
Conclusion
Choosing the best order management software for your company is crucial to keep your e-commerce company afloat in the fast-growing global online market. Any new software purchase can be pricey, but you can minimize the costs by defining what you need the OMS to accomplish.
Consider the features of the best OMS mentioned above, and see how those processes work in your company. Your clients will love your brand and be more likely to buy from you again if you have a solid order management process–an OMS that streamlines everything related to order processing. Thus, selecting the best solution for your company is crucial as it will save you operating expenses in the long run.
Aratum has all the comprehensive features you’re looking for in the best order management software. Manage inventory, track items as they’re being shipped, and integrate e-commerce into one unified system.
Now, play this scenario in your head. You just arrived at one of the best restaurants in town. Upon entering, you see your employees smiling and content with their jobs. That special company dinner celebrates your company’s sales target achievement. That’s because apart from your effective marketing, you’ve implemented the best order management system, improving your processes and minimizing delays and complaints risks. Isn’t that one of the scenarios you’ve been dreaming of?
The copyright-free featured photo of this article was sourced from Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.
