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Order management is a complex business, one that is full of plenty of its own challenges. Unfortunately for many small businesses, these challenges can be a roadblock to many of the opportunities which come with mastering your order management.
It can seem complicated to nail your order management, but once you have, there are rewards to be reaped.
Here are some typical order management challenges, and the opportunities which can replace them.
Order Management Challenges
Managing constantly changing data
One challenge many SMEs face when it comes to their order management, is the struggle to manage data which needs constantly updating. Firstly, there’s the challenge of updating it. Any business doing this manually knows that updating spreadsheets is a time consuming and laborious process, which is often prone to mistakes. Secondly, there’s the challenge of storing and sharing the data. Having sales data stored across multiple spreadsheets and manually shared across teams means often, data is lost or mixed up, and mistakes are made.
Tracking incoming orders
Keeping track of orders as and when they are placed can be tricky, especially if you’re a business which transacts orders through multiple channels. Maybe you make sales through Amazon, and each order needs to be copied from an email, or maybe keeping track of your own e-commerce site and physical store stock is proving a tough feat. Wherever sales are coming from, if they are manually logged as they arrive, room is made for errors and even missed orders, making your businesses rate of late or incorrect orders higher than it needs to be.
Reducing lead times
The pressure to reduce lead times is constant. As customers demand products to their doors faster than ever, it is a challenge faced by every inventory business to get it done. But expectations are not always simple to meet, and many small businesses find it tricky to identify where lead times can be squeezed.
Opportunities
How can you use order management to create opportunities for your business?
Reap the rewards of Automation
Creating a host of opportunities in front of you might be the result of a simple shift in ‘how things are done around here’. Automating your order management can help you overcome multiple challenges. Automation can allow small businesses to more effectively log incoming orders, seamlessly track their way through the pipeline, and make it simpler for the right information to be passed to the right people along the way. Having a system in place which automatically updates you when an order is placed (no matter which platform it came from), houses to-the-minute data on an orders fulfilment status and makes it simple for different teams to access what they need, can unlock a door to transforming the way your order management is done.
Shorten those Lead Times
Automation can help to move things more seamlessly along your sales pipeline. The result? An opportunity for any inventory business to shorten their lead times and beat delivery targets. Automating can be key to speeding up processes, and once your business has streamlined its pipeline, it can be simpler to identify the gaps you can plug with a little more efficiency.
Extra efficient stock management
Having quick access to up-to-date sales information makes tracking inventory levels in your warehouse an easier task. Not only can you rely on your data to provide you with an accurate overview of your current stock levels, it also creates reliable business data, meaning you can track and predict future demand. No business with a complete and reliable overview of inventory will sell a product that isn’t in stock, nor will they fall into the trap of piling stock high for a peak that never comes.
Turning your order management challenges into opportunities makes room for greater efficiency and more satisfied customers.
To find out about how Workhorse helps business to automate and streamline their inventory and order management, simply download our latest eBook.