Are You Ready for an eCommerce Platform?
With the busiest single online shopping day still approaching, suppliers and retailers are feeling the pressure this year to survive and thrive through this extended holiday season and still have inventory for Cyber Monday.
As the holiday season progresses, it’s important to stop and take note of bottlenecks and areas that are doing well so that as things calm in the new year, your business can assess what changes need to be made. Part of the solution to bottlenecks may be finding, or changing to, a software solution that will help your organization achieve its goals.
Are you considering a new eCommerce software solution?
Why Use an eCommerce Platform—
A software solution empowers you to take your business to the next level through production almost instantaneously. It helps streamline how your business interacts with your retailers, customers and employees.
It also helps execute complex functions on both the front end and back end of the business with simplicity, such as reducing the time to fulfill orders and reducing errors from manually entered data at every stop in the process.
How to Select your eCommerce Software Solution—
A software solution successfully achieves the desired outcomes and objectives of your business. Before this can happen, your organization must accurately assess how your business is handling such persistent high consumer demands and inconsistent supply chain issues.
Inward reflection and assessment will help call out the processes and areas of the business that are excelling, as well as the bottlenecks that would be made more efficient with the implementation of a simple software solution.
Understanding the competitive landscape will also help to better select the type of software solution your organization needs. If the products you sell have several variations, then a robust inventory management system is mandatory. Individual SKUs and how you organize the layout of the inventory in the warehouse are all critical components for your team to pick, pack and ship to consumers in a timely manner.
Another important area to assess is your partnership and processes with your retailers. They are under high pressure to assure that products are delivered quickly (same-day in some instances) and correctly to consumers, and suppliers who cannot keep up under this pressure are unfortunately cut from the list of suppliers when errors begin to arise and trust fades.
What Factors to Consider in your Software Selection –
- Vendor Experience & Expertise: When you meet with the software vendor, it is important to discuss how they have impacted and grown other eCommerce businesses.
- Support & Scalability: Implementation is key for the software solution to work, so a supportive software vendor will provide training custom to what your organization’s needs and goals.
- Compliant Processes with Retailers: Communicating who you supply products to and current processes will help the vendor to better personalize your package to your organization.
- Unlimited Order Capacity and EDI Included: The shift from a few bulk orders to thousands of small packages drop shipped to consumers everywhere has drastically increased the price of EDI for many organizations. Find a software solution that includes this as part of the package to drastically reduce costs per transaction.
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.
Your eCommerce business will be up and running quickly, with no downtime required for setup and the system syncs to all accounting and ERP systems without any customization required.
To learn more about how OPAL has partnered with many to scale their business to new levels of success, 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!