Having a cloud-based order management system in the world of eCommerce with its heavy order processing is paramount in order to keep up with increased customer demand.

Falling behind in advancing the systems that govern your business’s efficiency will negatively impact sales and throughput, resulting in a loss of sales that can be completely avoided with the right suite of tools.

We’re here today to help you get a better idea of what to look for when you’re inevitably searching for your perfect version of a cloud-based order management system.

Proper Supplier and PO Management

Integrating supplier management into your OMS system is necessary to effectively manage inventory levels and avoid out-of-stock situations. Being able to communicate with your supplier directly from your OMS provides several important benefits:

  • Share alerts when nearing low level of products
  • Generate automatic updates for all sales channels. Managing your suppliers in a separate system can lead to a major disconnect between sales channels.
  • Making sure important deadlines are met on time
  • Inventory auto reorders at low stock levels

Multichannel Management

Selling on multiple channels is inevitable today. Your customers are everywhere, and this can send your business into a frenzy— adding sales channels can create bottlenecks and cause customer concern in your processes.

Creating a multichannel customer experience requires more than just setting up multiple channel options. To be properly equipped for success in this environment, you must efficiently monitor sales and fulfill orders from all channels, but manually updating multiple orders from several channels can be daunting.

An effective cloud-based order management system should include the following:

  • Management of up to 50 different companies in one system
  • Maintain separate inventory and customer information for each company
  • Conveniently process all your orders from a single selection screen for each company
  • The ability to quickly switch from one company to another with just a few mouse clicks, or choose to share inventory across companies

Real-Time Reporting

The last thing you want to do is disappoint a customer by posting an item for sale when there is insufficient inventory to fulfill it. When products are flying off the shelves and sales are soaring, that’s the worst moment to encounter the dreaded “unexpected stock-out.”

To avoid overselling an item, you need a way to accurately monitor your inventory levels across all channels and real-time reporting that lets you know your current situation at all times. An advanced cloud-based order management system should provide functionality such as:

  • Orders by status
  • Orders that have not been picked, packed, shipped, or back-ordered
  • Orders awaiting credit card approval
  • Orders with a particular stock item

Simplified Shipping Process

Your OMS should send out orders efficiently and error-free. Integrating the shipping process alleviates bottlenecks and cuts the risk of manual data entry errors. That’s a customer experience win for you and your customer, who will receive products faster.

Here are some key cloud-based order management system capabilities that can optimize your shipping process:

  • Improving pick, pack, and ship with barcode scanning
  • Offering integrated rate shopping and package tracking
  • The ability to tailor your company’s shipping policies to your specific market
  • Automatically correct, verify and print addresses

The Takeaways

With proper supplier and PO management, you’ll be able to break through the bottlenecks and streamline your processes.

In a multichannel world, your cloud-based order management system must pull together all orders in one comprehensive automated process that works seamlessly for you and your customers.

Real-time reporting in your OMS, tied to order processing and inventory management, is a necessity.

Integrating shipping automation into your OMS is a win-win for you and your customers, and will reduce the risk of making embarrassing mistakes that are much more likely to happen without a high-quality process in place.

We encourage you to take look at our cloud-based solution M.O.M which includes all of the processes that we touched on in this article. If you’re a more hands-on learner then we encourage you to take a look at our free demo.

Contact us if you have any questions about how M.O.M., our cloud-based order management software, can help you work more efficiently and create happier customers.