The Cloud or Bust with Customer Order Management

customer order managementAs a manufacture or wholesaler, do you often wonder how customer order management software can help increase B2B customer satisfaction? Are you looking to improve your value to your customers? What's so great about switching to a new ordering system instead of using the one that your company has had for years? That's the one that all of your people know how to use.

 

The Truth

It really comes down to giving your B2B clients a customer order management solution that is easy to use. It can be used at any workstation and on many kinds of mobile devices. With a turnkey software solution, all that you need to get started with it is an Internet connection. Cloud-based software places real-time information in the hands of customers and sales reps. When your B2B customers go to their ordering dashboard, they see what you have in stock and can view custom prices. On your end as a manufacturer, your sales reps can track customer orders and find the whereabouts of each product in your supply chain. This includes tracking, shipping, invoicing, and billing information.

Two-Way Communication

When customers and sales reps see the same data, you can eliminate many problems experienced in the order management process.  B2B customers get better estimates of when they will take delivery of products, enabling them to improve service to their customers. Precision is the name of the game. Your sales reps can estimate the quantities that they can provide at discounted prices while not promising items that are out of stock.

Cost-Reduction through Data Analytics

Using cloud-based customer order software also makes it easy to analyze sales trends.  You can look for consumer trends using data from past sales orders to make more informed business decisions.  A customer order management system in the cloud gives you data that can drive your sales strategies like how the sales of a particular product or a product line compared year over year? If your sales volume for one product increased by 20%, this year you could order extra raw materials and increase the production schedule to manufacture more in time for the holiday.

Warehouse Management Nightmares

A big benefit of using a cloud-based order management system with fulfillment integration is that it services both your sales division and your warehouse divisions, which are two very different sides of a manufacturing firm. Your company wants a system that can easily scale up to accommodate sudden surges in the sales volume, such as during the holiday shopping season. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal noted that retailer Finish Line lost up to $32 million in sales this past holiday season because its warehouse management system couldn't keep up with orders. The result of this short-term event is that Finish Line may close up to 150 of its retail stores over the next few years.

Logistical Thinking

To stay ahead of competition, you must be able to build an order management process around you that works efficiently and satisfies consumer demand. This includes placing more accurate orders with suppliers of raw materials and giving better inventory levels to distributors and retailers. Even if you sell directly to B2B customers, you want real-time estimates of product deliveries. A cloud-based ordering system gives you all of these capabilities and many more.

These are just some benefits of cloud-based customer order management systems. The reporting features in the sales dashboard, the customer dashboard, and the fulfillment dashboard will make your customer order management more streamlined with less work and less time.

Order management software