Everybody loves taking a new order from a customer. In fulfilling the order, things can get a little tricky. If your business is like most, you haven’t quite found the perfect, streamlined system for efficiently fulfilling customer orders.
Managing customer orders and fulfillment is a continuous journey for any business. For wholesalers, manufacturers, or distributors, the scale of orders is often larger than that of a B2C retailer. Leveraging order management software that efficiently tracks orders and seamlessly transmits them to a third-party logistics provider (3PL) can be pivotal in expediting order dispatch with minimal effort. Partnering with a top-tier service provider not only minimizes errors in the fulfillment process but also reduces shipping costs and provides access to advanced technology that might otherwise be out of reach.
If you’re considering implementing an online order management system for your wholesale business, you’ll probably know how it will improve your process. It will greatly reduce manual order entry and the time spent responding to routine customer service inquiries. It will increase efficiency, reduce errors, and eliminate duplicate work.
How well does your order fulfillment process work? Is everything as smooth as it could be? Do shipments arrive at your customers' locations on time without errors? Can your fulfillment center get orders from you quickly and out the door with little effort? Could there have been better communication between your company and your third-party fulfillment center (3PL)?
Implementing integrated order entry software is one of the most effective ways to streamline your order processing routine. Your sales reps, customer service staff, and wholesale customers can place orders online, and those orders will be automatically created in QuickBooks without any additional data entry. Order entry software can also help streamline your entire fulfillment process. Here are three critical tasks that can be automated with software:
You may have some systems and processes you've outgrown but haven't had the time or resources to address. If you're like a lot of fast-growing wholesale businesses, your order fulfillment process could be very high on that list.
When you first opened your doors, you may have been able to take orders, grab the inventory, and box up the product yourself. Today, you have more incoming orders than you and your team can handle. If you're still using the same process that you did back when you were a one-person operation, you may have a serious problem.
I want to start with some basics about fulfillment strategy and then dig into the details. Many B2B companies struggle with this, but getting it right can be the difference between blowing customers out of the water and failing to impress.
It’s one thing to attract new business to your website, but it’s another to retain that new business. All customers want a streamlined, easy ordering process, but customers in the B2B segment are often relatively neglected compared to those in B2C.
It’s never a bad thing to get new orders. After all, orders keep your business running. The speed bumps arrive when you need to fulfill the order. You’re not alone if you have yet to find the perfect system for fulfilling customer orders as efficiently as possible. Most businesses don’t have a system as streamlined or effective as they’d like.
Why is that?
It starts with the order-taking process. A salesperson may have handwritten a form, called it in, or emailed it, or customer service has taken a handwritten order of its own.
One of the biggest problems for B2B companies is dealing with data entry errors. You're perhaps one B2B business that still uses antiquated wholesale order management software requiring manual data entry to get order information coordinated. This can lead to vast confusion for your fulfillment center, especially when they have to call you to see why you have discrepancies on record.
