The order management process starts when an order is placed and ends when the customer receives the package. As such, it is critical to many aspects of the company. To ensure your customers deliver their orders on time, monitoring order fulfillment is critical. In this way, you can improve customer satisfaction and ultimately increase sales.
In this article, we’ll show you what order management enables and the benefits of automation.
What tasks are involved in order management?
Typical tasks of order management include accepting orders, prioritizing all existing orders, recording order processing, assigning tasks, and finally executing orders. Quality control should be carried out regularly throughout the process to ensure customer satisfaction.
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Table of contents:
What is order management?
Order management allows companies to coordinate the entire fulfillment process. These include, but are not limited to, order entry, inventory management, and service availability. Depending on the needs of the company, the associated workflows will always look different. However, a typical order management process usually consists of three steps:
1. Placement
Customer orders are placed through automated forms. A member of the sales team reviews this information and confirms the order.
2. Inventory management
This includes overall monitoring of inventory levels, as these fluctuate with business needs.
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3. Fulfillment
In this step, warehouse workers confirm shipping details, create an invoice and finalize the order.
Implementing good order management is critical to a company’s success. Because just one handling error can affect the entire supply chain and hurt sales. Therefore, at this point, it is especially important to work precisely, rigorously and reliably to avoid mistakes. Optimal customer order management enables you to identify rush orders, track order quantities to be shipped, avoid order delays, focus on strategic customers, and more.
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What is the difference between order management and order management?
Order management is the process of accepting customer orders by telephone, letter, fax, email or online and providing timely and accurate information about the products and services ordered.
On the other hand, order management includes the process of managing customer orders through processing and fulfillment. Order managers manage all other departments in the organization to ensure the company is ready to handle new orders. This includes external partners such as suppliers or logistics service providers as well as internal departments.
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The difference, therefore, is that order management takes care of all aspects related to a company’s customer orders—including processing and fulfillment tasks during the order.
What is an order management system?
When managing orders, nearly every system and process in the supply chain is affected. For many companies, order management is performed outside the organization. For example, various partners involved in providing packaging or distribution. This quickly leads to low data transparency and out-of-control orders.
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An order management system is critical to efficient warehouse operations. These systems allow you to digitally manage the entire lifecycle of an order.
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What does order management software do?
By automating manual processes and reducing errors, order management software can control costs and increase revenue. The software tracks all information and processes, including order entry, inventory management, and order fulfillment. Thus, it provides transparency to companies and consumers.
The smoother the software runs, the faster orders can be processed. This greatly reduces the risk of your customers receiving the wrong item or experiencing frustration with backorders.
Order management software accomplishes the following tasks, among others:
inventory control
An important function of order management software is inventory control. You can automatically reorder items when stock runs low. This ensures successful order fulfillment and reduces your costs.
sales automation
By automating the entire sales process, you can reduce your workload by tracking every aspect of a sale, including products ordered, payment, and delivery status.
Shipping and Receiving
You can also stay on top of deliveries and receipts by accessing real-time updates on the status of each delivery and receiving notifications if issues arise.
User Management
Order management software allows you to manage every aspect of the customer journey, from lead generation to retention to cross-selling.
Report
Another important function is to analyze your performance. This enables you to identify areas for improvement and determine what your top products, top customers, etc. are.
Read the tips: Here you can find a comparison of the best listing management systems.
Benefits of Order Management Software
As you may have learned in the previous section, order management software has many benefits for your company. We’ll now show you exactly why it’s worth using software for order management.
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Efficient automation:
If you use a software solution for order processing, you can save working hours, thereby reducing labor and personnel costs. Order management software relies entirely on automation—from store operations to delivery.
Business growth:
Using software can give you more time to collect and analyze customer data. This will help you optimize the selection in your store and build stronger customer relationships.
More Accurate Inventory Management:
By automating inventory management, you reduce user error by your employees – as manual entry leads to typos, etc. more quickly.
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24/7 access to:
You always have the option to follow your business from your smartphone or laptop.
Real-time information:
With up-to-date information at your fingertips, you can quickly resolve issues as they arise before they impact customer service or disrupt sales cycles.
Centralized data:
Your order management dashboard should neatly combine accounting, inventory, and customer information. This makes it easier for you to keep track of your business and sales.
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in conclusion
Successful order management is a key point for your company to ensure customer satisfaction. Today, order management is no longer just about processing orders, but about integrating all client systems (such as ERP or CRM) that affect the after-sales experience—and more importantly, bringing all stakeholders together on one platform.
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Order Management FAQ
What is an order manager?
As an order manager, you are the link between your company and your customers. He or she is the customer contact for all matters related to the order.
What is involved in order processing?
Order management includes all organizational processes related to company orders – from customer inquiries to quotation preparation, to checking payment receipts and post-purchase support.
What is the goal of order management?
Efficient order processing allows you to save your company money and time while ensuring higher customer satisfaction. Of course, the goal is always to increase sales, improve customer loyalty and win new customers.
How to process the order?
Order processing is an important part of order management. It begins after the quotation is prepared and includes all activities from customer inquiries to the creation of invoices.
About the author: Alice Viete is a content marketing expert. As an agency owner, she supports B2B and eCommerce companies in implementing their personalized content strategies. On the Shopify Blog, she writes about current topics of successful retailers and online transactions.