For many omnichannel business owners, the process of fulfilling, recording, and tracking sales is a tedious one. Most of them carry out these processes manually, which makes it even more tedious for them, and results in delays and errors in the process. Automating this process helps businesses to speed it up and save money.
Omnichannel order management brings all sales channels together. It is the process of using software to organise and manage inventory, orders, and returns on multiple sales channels throughout the sales process. The software facilitates faster order fulfilment across all your channels, enabling you to run your business efficiently. Following are the benefits of using an omnichannel order management system (OMS) for your business:
Automates Sales
Running physical and online stores simultaneously can be stressful. An omnichannel OMS allows you to automate order processing on all your platforms from a single location and process orders even outside working hours and on holidays. This allows you more time to manage and grow your business and make more sales.
Decreases Costs
An omnichannel OMS saves you money by automating repetitive tasks and eliminating the scope of human error. It provides a real-time view of your inventory across all your platforms, preventing you from counting and recording inventory manually and consequently overstocking/understocking it. Automating inventory counting also allows you to allocate less staff to get it done, leaving them more time to sell the inventory and make more profits.
The system can also suggest your delivery personnel warehouses that are closest to your customers, the quickest routes to get there, and weather conditions along the way. This helps you to increase customer satisfaction and save fuel by ensuring quick deliveries.
If you run out of stock in one location, you can use the system to see which of your locations are overstocked that you can ship from to avoid dead inventory and selling the stock later at a discounted price.
Grows With Growing Businesses
It is a myth that only big businesses need automation. Any business can benefit from using advanced technology and software. Businesses are increasingly adopting new technologies to improve their productivity and stand out from the competition.
Scaling your business may seem like a daunting task, but won’t be if you use the right tools. An omnichannel OMS can adapt to the growing needs of your business. You can add and manage multiple sales platforms on it without disrupting your business operations.
Improves Customer Experience And Satisfaction
The key to success for businesses lies in identifying and fulfilling customer needs. Today’s customers love convenience. They shop from multiple channels, and want businesses to meet them where they are. An omnichannel OMS allows you to provide customers with multiple options to make purchases and get them delivered, like buying online and receiving orders at home, buying online and picking up orders from the nearest outlet, or buying online and returning items to the nearest outlet, and paying for them online or offline. Offering your customers this convenience increases their frequency of shopping with you and their loyalty towards your brand.
Increases Inventory Transparency
Transparency is key to creating customer satisfaction that ensures repeat orders and referrals for businesses. As mentioned before, an omnichannel OMS offers you real-time centralised visibility of your inventory across all your warehouses. You can use this information to track the movement of your stock and send your customers stock availability updates, order delivery updates, and estimated delivery times. If one of your locations goes out of stock, the system can check for the stock’s availability in other locations which you can ship from to avoid dissatisfied customers and losing sales. Having an accurate inventory count also helps you to forecast your inventory requirements accurately and stock up accordingly.
Smoothens The Returns Process
An omnichannel OMS makes it easy for you to process returns by providing you with the purchase history of your customers and sending you real-time return request notifications. Once a return has been initiated, the system tracks the returning items at all stages of the process.
Helps To Track Customer Behaviour And Forecast Inventory Accurately
By using an AI (Artificial Intelligence)-enabled omnichannel OMS, you can gain insights into customer purchase patterns. This data can help you to know the peak and slow seasons for your products and order inventory accordingly.
