One way businesses can exceed expectations nowadays is having a buttoned-up order fulfillment process. If you’re still getting your digital processes in alignment, that’s OK – many others are too.
But some pieces of the puzzles are more important than others, so today we’d like to share with you four ways to improve your speed to ensure a better experience for your buyers.
4 Ways to Speed Up the Order Fulfillment Process
- Rely on Digital Order Capture
- Have Systems That Talk to Each Other
- Connect All Aspects of Your Internal Business
- Keep Your Buyers Informed to Updates
Let’s look at how each of these steps will help your business.
1. Rely on Digital Order Capture
You can’t fulfill orders that aren’t in your system, so why would you take orders in manual formats and enter them later? Yet this is happening all the time in the field, at conferences and conventions, while on the phone or in email.
All these manual orders can’t even begin the fulfillment process until they’re in your order system. The longer it takes for these orders to make it into the system, the longer it takes for your fulfillment process to even get underway, let alone completed. Worse yet, manual order entry can introduce costly errors.
Equipping your sales team with a Mobile App can ensure they can enter orders in real time. An offline mode can be beneficial for those times when connectivity isn’t available. Orders can be synced when internet is available, with the peace of mind that orders will be captured correctly.
Inputting orders directly into your order taking and management system can share hours to days off your fulfillment timeline.
2. Have Systems That Talk to Each Other
Linking your business systems can ensure data quickly and efficiently ends up in the right places. If you have accounting software like QuickBooks Online, a CRM like NetSuite or Salesforce, or fulfillment solutions like ShipStation, ensuring all the systems can talk to each other will improve time to process orders.
Successful fulfillment operations aim to have orders delivered on time, accurately and in good condition. Ensuring systems can pass information along in real time will make that first part much more possible to achieve.
3. Connect All Aspects of Your Internal Business
Along with ensuring your business systems are talking together, your internal teams should all be leveraging the digital offerings as well. Your sales, marketing, customer service and fulfillment teams should all be linked in, having access to the information and able to interact instantly.
By aligning your internal teams, and ensuring they’re using these systems primarily, it will ensure that no information is left behind, and that updates are happening in real time.
4. Keep Your Buyers Informed to Updates
With all information living inside these systems, your buyers can benefit too through real time updates. They can self-confirm their order status. They can also confirm the right items are ordered and where they are in the process of being delivered.
If you have access to all this data, why shouldn’t your buyers?
Zoey Can Help You Take Your Order Fulfillment Process Forward
Are you ready to move your business forward? Then simply click the button below and request a conversation with our team. We’ll show you how your business can transform with true digital B2B and wholesale solutions:
