You probably started your business using excel spreadsheets, faxes, and emails to help you keep your orders straight. If you’re like many small B2B businesses, you have a stack of invoices printed to hand off to your warehouse staff to pull and fulfill orders.
That worked, for the time that you started your business.
But it’s not enough anymore.
There’s more competition for the same business, and you’re busier than ever thanks to the loyal customers you’ve acquired over the years.
But the competition is doing the same thing you are now. To keep your business a step ahead, you need to adapt – but with how busy you and your team are, how can you find the time to improve?
Eliminate that time you spend managing all those orders.
Where it all began: the old way you managed orders
10 years ago, ordering was a less than streamlined process for any wholesale distributor. Your sales team took calls, hand wrote the orders, and fulfillment took time. Those excel spreadsheets you still use were essential to keeping up with all of the data you needed – inventory, pricing, and special customer notes.
But with the use of those spreadsheets came problems. Double-entering data into multiple places (labels, QuickBooks, and translating handwritten orders to the spreadsheet itself) was, and is, just asking for errors. The more times data is copied, the more chances there are for mistakes to happen.
Plus, there’s the time. Keeping track of everything manually takes valuable man hours, both yours and that of your team. It’s inefficient, especially with all of the tools available now to help businesses like yours.
The modern solution: online customer portal
Rather than keeping track of everything through pen, paper, and excel sheets, you can instead offer a customized portal where your customers log in to place their orders. It communicates with QuickBooks, automatically entering the order into your system, and then sending it straight to your warehouse.
No more double entries, no delays, no questioning if an order is correct or if you have the inventory to fill it.
Your customers get greater insight into their order, letting them know what’s available and how long it’ll take for them to get that order.
Not only does it streamline their ordering process, but it decreases the time you and your team spend on customer service. Fewer emails asking for status updates, fewer calls to follow up on, less time spent simply providing information to your customers.
This is why order management software is essential for your business to continue to grow.
You’re providing your customers with the convenience and information they’ve always wanted.
Using the Now Commerce online ordering platform, you’ll be doing more than making your life easier.
Your customers’ lives are easier – which puts you ahead of the competition.
They can log in and place orders whenever they want, as well as log in to check the status of those orders.
Thanks to Amazon, even B2B customers now expect a certain level of transparency and availability of information with their shipments. They also want their shipments fast, and they want to know if the items they’re ordering are in stock – in real time.
And your customers will be happy about it, because they’ll be getting more of what they need.
It’s win-win for everyone involved.
More than just easy communication with customers – easy communication with employees, too.
Speaking of wins for everyone involved, your employees may just have the biggest win of all. The online ordering portal allows your customers greater insight into available inventory, their prices on everything, and the status of their order.
By utilizing an online ordering portal, you’re opening up communication between two departments that often have issues: sales and the warehouse.
Both departments can stay connected, with information quickly and easily shared between them. Warehouse staff knows what’s on hand, what orders have been made, and they can ensure they keep all the inventory they need on hand.
Your sales team also benefits in a big way. They get more information about the status of orders, what inventory is on hand, and they no longer have to wait hours for updates. They can help customers faster and more efficiently, which gives them more time to work on new prospects.
Which means more business, which means more revenue.
Who doesn’t want more of that?
Order management software is the most effective way to update your business processes.
By utilizing software to modernize how your business accepts and processes orders, you’re ensuring that your business is able to stay ahead of the competition. Instead of spending hours each week managing your orders, your team can focus on the problems that will further your business’s goals.
All those smaller projects (or big ones!) that no one’s ever had time to dive into become possible thanks to the time being saved on administrative tasks.
Automation through order management software is an easy way to gain many benefits for your business – and for your customers.
It doesn’t have to be wishful thinking that your business could utilize this kind of software.
Click below to request a demo from our team, and see how Now Commerce could help your business improve how it manages and processes orders.
