As the retail landscape and consumer expectations continue to shift towards more online shopping, your retail partners will continue to shift and expect more and more out of suppliers to remain competitive.

Due to the pandemic, eCommerce has surpassed levels not expected until 2025, and many believe will bring in over $843 billion in sales this year.

With the constant push for suppliers and retailers to grow, where can you adjust processes and become more efficient?

Meet Ken, Supplier of Home Furniture and OPAL Fanatic

Prior to OPAL, his team manually entered all purchase orders by hand into their Accounting System, as well as all FedEx small parcel labels and Bill of Ladings for LTL shipments, which was not only labor intensive but resulted in numerous mistakes, errors and return shipments.

Why Was OPAL a Good Fit for You?

OPAL provided a solution where EDI partner orders can be automatically imported into our system eliminating manual entry. Also, we were able to automatically create and print shipping labels with pre-set rules that made our shipping process much faster. Training for OPAL was under an hour and operating the entire procedure is very simple which made it easy for us to train our employees.

What Results Have You Achieved with OPAL?

Since we started OPAL for our automated processes for order entry and label creation, we were able to focus on the core of the business and the fulfillment processes. Our resources that we have allocated for order entry and shipping label creation opened up for us to use them in other areas. Our trading partners quickly saw the capacity increase in our fulfillment process and we were able to secure a larger number of orders.

What Would You Say to Someone Who is Considering OPAL?

I would highly recommend OPAL to any company who wants to create an automated procedure for order entry and label creation. OPAL support is timely and responsive. Their solutions make sense and can be tailored for many needs that come up during the process. I’m extremely happy with the transition to OPAL because it enabled for me to find the time on focusing other parts of the business.

Process an Order in Under 8 Seconds!

Order processing with time constrains and increased volume can be your business’s weakness if handled manually (or semi-automatically) or your strength when completely automated. With OPAL, automation means your backend processing is complete in less than 8 seconds and all that is left to do is pick, pack and ship the product to the customer! To learn more about the benefits of order processing, read our most recent blog here.

Simplify with OPAL’s 4-in-1 Software Solution
EDI | Order Management | Warehouse Management | Shipping

OPAL is the innovative solution to simplify your small to mid-sized to enterprise business fulfillment needs in todays’ rapidly transforming retail world.

With OPAL, your order processing will allow you to not only reach additional customers to sell more product, but you will build trust and prove dependability with your many sales channels.

To learn more about how OPAL can help your business simplify your order processing, click here!

Click here to book your customized demo today.  We are here to support you through this time of change and are here to help you innovate and thrive!

From the initial customer order to fulfillment and post-sale communications, each piece of the order management process is proving to be critical as eCommerce continues to grow rapidly in 2021. 

With the vaccine becoming more readily available, Americans are shifting from a sentiment of hesitancy to hope and a return to a more normal lifestyle.  Retailers and suppliers are preparing for what some are calling the “Second Age of Roaring ‘20s Consumerism”. It’s tempting to ask if history will repeat itself and wonder if the 2020s roar and consumerism surges in the same way it did after the Spanish Influenza pandemic in the 1920s.

As consumers are eager to get out of the house and enjoy outdoor activities and travel again, here are a few best practices to help better prepare your ecommerce business for this ongoing rush as consumers resume their everyday lives.

Receiving & Processing Orders

• As you receive orders from multiple sales channels, you will need an automated process to consolidate orders and automatically adjust inventory levels.  This will reduce the error of over or underselling inventory and build trust with your sales channels.

• Order processes will depend on how and where you store your inventory, whether you’re storing it in your own warehouse or partnering with a 3PL.  Stay consistent to reduce the chance of human errors.

Order Fulfillment & Post Sales Practices

• Increased accuracy with picking, packing and shipping starts with organized inventory that have been assigned SKUs to make it easy to differentiate and then to assign a barcode to each SKU to reduce human errors in the picking process.  By checking the order sheet’s barcode against the barcodes on items in your warehouse, this reduces both the amount of time to collect the ordered item and the chances of sending the incorrect product to the consumer.

• Multiple points of quality control throughout the process help to reduce the chance that consumers are shipped incorrect products and quantities.  Many retailers and suppliers utilize the packing process as the second verification point for quality control.

Automation through Software Solutions

• Automating your processes with a software solution may seem daunting, but this frees up manpower / time and reduces the risk of human errors, allowing your business to grow as demand for your product line continues to increase.

• Inventory management across multiple sales channels in real-time is key when retailers look to include a new supplier. As discussed earlier in order processing, when working with several sales channels, it’s critical to automate for accurate and timely representation of inventory for consumers. Retailers and their brand have communicated a standard of quality and being able to provide the product to the consumer in a quick and timely manner is part of this expected customer journey.

• Simplifying processes through automation allows your eCommerce business to reduce processing time and cost, increase order accuracy and the number of daily shipments per person without the need to hire and train additional staff.

Simplify with OPAL’s 4-in-1 Software Solution
EDI | Order Management | Warehouse Management | Shipping

OPAL is the innovative solution to simplify your small to mid-sized to enterprise business fulfillment needs in today’s rapidly transforming retail world.  

As your eCommerce business looks to optimize processes for this coming surge of post-pandemic consumerism, OPAL is here to assist you in each of the mentioned best practices so that you can grow your business and meet the demands of consumers and retailers.

To learn more about how to make your eCommerce business scalable with OPAL, click here!

Click here to book your customized demo today.  We are here to support you through this time of change and are here to help you innovate and thrive!