Modernizing the wholesale sales process by moving to order management software should be one of your strategic goals for the year. For years, you've likely used Excel spreadsheets, faxes, and emails to keep orders straight.
In your B2B wholesale business, this worked fine for the times, but you are getting busier and competition has stepped up in recent years. It's possible you're seeing more B2B businesses doing the same thing you are and attempting to take your loyal buyers away.
The above could happen overnight if you don't get yourself modernized. One thing that forces buyers to move on is your team not getting orders correct. With businesses depending on your products to keep them afloat, just one big mistake may disrupt any loyalty.
It's the same if you don't make it convenient for them to keep on top of orders. The days when someone had to guess whether an order actually shipped are over.
Order management software has continually improved, and online portals are now the modern way to conduct wholesale sales.
Look at how it can change the way you conduct your B2B business.
The Old Way
Your B2B business has possibly been around long enough to remember when ordering was more protracted. Even as recently as five years ago, the wholesale ordering process was messy and prone to error.
Remember when you had to manually enter each order into Excel spreadsheets? No doubt you experienced at least one error because of the immense amount of details. As a result of having limited staff available to catch errors, you could have had numerous orders not reach their proper destinations.
When something went wrong, it usually meant having to email the warehouse and other individuals to set things right. It also meant sending faxes for more real-time responses, and always apologizing to your customers.
All of the above was before the age of the cloud and bringing a more universality to communication. When used in order management software, the cloud changes the entire spectrum of how you can get everyone on the same page.
The Advent of the Online Customer Portal
Not until the last few years have you seen more attempts at letting the customer take control of their accounts and orders. Online portals are important now because it gives a buyer a chance to order easily when they want and also see the details.
The best order management software will sync seamlessly to your accounting software like QuickBooks, which will give your customers the ability to view inventory in real time. When they place an order, it will automatically be entered into QuickBooks and can also be sent straight to your warehouse with no additional keying in of the order. Customers get their order faster and with no errors.
Give your customers a customized order form so customers can just click one button to get more of what they need. Plus, with enhanced search capabilities, it can utilize the best of cross-selling without you having to do any selling.
Customers are able to see shipping and tracking status any time they choose which will decrease the amount of emails and phone calls you receive for these simple, but time consuming and tedious questions.
Using the Online Portal to Communicate with Employees
If personal online portals help you enhance customer communication, it's even more so when communicating with your warehouse or sales reps. Since these are two separate departments that can frequently get their wires crossed, they can stay linked through the cloud.
Having a consolidated online location where they quickly communicate and share information will eliminate the need to send emails and wait hours for a response. Sales reps can then get back quickly to their customers with any question they may have.
You can find order management software giving you all of this and more at Now Commerce. Visit our website to learn more about how we're modernizing the B2B industry with a more efficient ordering process.
