Order processing is a seemingly simple, common business practice that wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, and importers deal with every single day. If you’re using QuickBooks, you’ve likely learned very quickly where the issues in your ordering process are, and you’ve also probably realized that QuickBooks alone isn’t going to be the solution to those issues.
When the holiday season is here, and as a wholesale supplier, you’re probably already deep in the weeds as your customers start stocking up in preparation for the biggest shopping days of the year. You need to be prepared so that you can get your books as far into the black as possible before the end of the fiscal year.
Whether you have a physical warehouse for supplying your wholesale customers or you’re a digital drop-shipping distributor, you’ll run into the same problems business owners have had for hundreds of years.
Management challenges, inventory issues, keeping customers coming back, etc.
The biggest problem that distribution businesses have isn’t any of those. It’s time.
When clothing distributors are looking for wholesalers and manufacturers to partner with, they’re generally looking for someone who has a clear record of success, someone who has partnered with plenty of retailers and who can reliably, and continually, fulfill new orders and keep product flowing out the door.
Many established B2B businesses are stuck in a rut. They’ve offered the same things, the same ways, for years – sometimes decades – and they don’t see why they should change.
Technology has made it easier than ever to lose customers.
Recently, Salesforce released a report on the state of customer service in the manufacturing sector. This report is full of helpful information, and if you haven’t already read it, you can check it out by clicking here.
QuickBooks is a powerful software, but, like all software, it has limits. This is nothing against QuickBooks — far from it. QuickBooks does what it does very well, it’s designed to take care of very specific tasks, and it doesn’t make the mistake that many pieces of software have made over the years by trying to be something it’s not.
In the beginning, you likely relied on Excel spreadsheets, faxes, and emails to manage your orders efficiently. Like numerous small B2B enterprises, you might have a pile of printed invoices ready to pass on to your warehouse team for order fulfillment.
Order management software (for B2B ecommerce-oriented companies especially), isn’t just something that sounds nice, something that could be a good idea to maybe look into 5 years down the road, something that you talk about around the office from time to time, something where you say, “Hey, you know, maybe we should get that someday.”
Better ordering processing makes everyone’s life better. From the people in your office, to your warehouse, to your customers – streamlined, effective order processing makes people happy.