Introducing new technology into your business understandably can be daunting. You want to make the right decision the first time around to avoid creating more hassle down the line for yourself, your staff and your customers.
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However, feeling confident that you have selected the right provider in the first place is a huge step forward in alleviating your worries. Here are 10 questions you should ask an online ordering provider when evaluating options for your business.
Let&#;s discuss the obvious one first: cost. Pricing models vary from provider to provider, but typically, you will find a few main models:
To calculate a more accurate cost give some thought to your average order value and the number of online orders you expect per month when comparing pricing.
You will also want to consider if the provider charges a setup or onboarding fee or transaction fees (likely if you accept online payments).
Some providers attempt to gloss over transaction fees stating that they&#;re not 'their' charges and you 'just need to set-up an account to get paid'. Transaction fees can be some of the highest charges you pay. They are determined by which payment gateways the ordering provider can integrate into their platform. Be sure to understand all the charges involved in transacting online and getting your funds settled in full before committing to a solution.
Free platforms do exist and can be the right choice for some businesses. However, they typically don&#;t include premium functionality like timing your menu, taking payment online or integrating with your point of sale.
While naturally, the cost may be a starting point in your decision-making process, it shouldn&#;t be the end. Deciding based purely on price could leave you short-changed. The following questions consider the functionality you might need your online ordering system to have.
If you are in the food business, what you sell at 8am can be very different from what&#;s on sale at 3pm. You need one unified menu for ease of customers knowing where to go to place an order, but you don&#;t want to sell items which are not available. Your menu should be smart enough that corresponding with the time the customer has selected for collection or delivery, only display items for sale that are available.
In a world where bad news travels fast, you can&#;t afford your customers to have negative experiences with your business. Suppose a customer shows up someday to collect their online order for a product you don&#;t have in stock. There&#;s a chance you&#;ll never see that customer again, plus the potential knock-on effect that they tell their friends and family of their poor experience. Therefore it&#;s vitally important you have a mechanism to disable products; whether manually or automatically if the online ordering system monitors your inventory.
By the very nature of some businesses, your kitchen can be significantly busier at certain times of the day. You don&#;t want to be in a situation where you take more orders than you can put out. Having the ability to limit and control the number of orders at given times can help you avoid this sort of situation.
Your customers are just that, your customers. Your online ordering platform should ensure you have control of and access to your customer data. While not every provider gives this access to you, their business practices could mean that they can obtain and use your customer data for their own purposes.
Gift cards are a great additional revenue stream but having disparate systems comes with logistical headaches. Ensuring customers can use the same gift card to pay online and in-store will provide a more cohesive and seamless experience.
The less paperwork your online ordering system causes you, the better. An online ordering platform that&#;s integrated with your POS requires no extra end of day management. All data is entered as transactions in your POS system for your bookkeeper and accountants to reconcile, saving both time and money.
Suppose your online ordering system has a loyalty program. Does it have a way to reward customers that also like to make purchases in-store? Providing a consistent experience both on and offline, especially when it comes to your loyalty scheme, is critical.
Loyalty programs are a tool to help you retain and engage, and increase spending through positive reinforcement. It would therefore be counter-intuitive to allow your customers to have a negative experience with your loyalty system.
Whether it is &#;spend X to get 10% off&#; or &#;buy one get one free&#;, promotional campaigns are excellent to motivate your customers to buy, spend more and come back again. Having the ability to run targeted deals and offers to increase average order size and order frequency as part of your online ordering system is essential.
The more buttons a customer has to press, the greater the probability of abandoning their cart. When comparing different service providers, count the number of clicks required to make an order of one product; if it goes over nine, you should start getting worried. Look out for providers that offer even faster approaches such as a &#;Quick Reorder&#; feature where with one tap a customer can recreate their entire last order.
Also, over 80% of online orders will happen on mobile. Ensuring that the experience of ordering on mobile is as easy and intuitive as possible is vital. If there is the option with the online ordering provider to release a mobile app for your business, then all the better.
At SkuNexus, we get a lot of questions. Prospective clients have reached a point in their eCommerce journey where major change is required, and they need help.
Executing a major change is never easy, but recognizing that it&#;s necessary is a critical first step in the right direction.
When it comes to order management, many merchants use technology that performs well enough when business is light. As sales orders pick up, however, they find that same tech incapable of handling the expansion.
Others may employ manual processes to route and track orders. After one-too-many headaches, it occurs that there must be a better way to do this.
Whatever the situation, a vast array of order management solutions exists to help put your business back on a successful trajectory - finding out which one is right for you means doing some homework.
To help with that, we&#;d like to present 5 frequently asked order management questions we get at SkuNexus. These are fairly general and a good starting point to consider before digging deeper into the specific issues of your unique circumstances.
This is arguably the first question you should ask of any management solutions provider. If their systems cannot seamlessly integrate with your entire tech stack, any number of potential problems can occur, and each one will cost time and money to fix.
On the other hand, having systems that do speak to each other yields singular and reliable information, maximizes ROI, saves time, and eliminates human error.
In addition to connecting to your eCommerce platform, a worthy order management system (OMS) should be able to communicate with ERP, POS, PIM, BI, and marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, etc.
Integrating with a wide range of software is crucial, however it must be stated that performance matters, as well.
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Information sync is a critical function that ensures the same data exists between disparate systems. This does not just happen automatically, and lags can affect things like inventory accuracy. This, in turn, might delay the order fulfillment process, postpone delivery and negatively impact customer satisfaction.
SkuNexus allows information flow between any integrations in real time. By continually pulling data as quickly as connected software provides it, 100% inventory accuracy is maintained across sales channels.
Integrations with your technology are a necessary feature, certainly, but an OMS should integrate with other platforms as well. Namely, shipping companies. This ensures immediate access to delivery information about any order in the system while also providing the ability to rate shop between different carriers.
The concept of automation can be difficult to grasp. We get that. All too often, images of warehouse robots and wheeled drones come to mind when one hears the word in relation to the eCommerce backend.
When we talk about automation at SkuNexus, it involves our systems performing tasks and making decisions using the wealth of information contained within. This functionality greatly increases efficiency and productivity, and opportunities for automation abound within the realm of order management.
This corresponds directly with the need for software integrations. Omnichannel orders will come in from a broad field of sources, and attempting to manually collect and sort them would inevitably be marred by human error.
A powerful OMS can not only receive order information from an ever-increasing number of sales channels, but will also be able to organize a coherent structure for merchants to begin processing.
When an order is received from a sales channel, the OMS leaps into action and checks inventory against the shipping address and fulfillment method, as well as any other special considerations. It then routes that order to the correct location for processing.
In SkuNexus, should the system determine that order would best be fulfilled via dropshipping, for example, a purchase order is generated automatically and submitted to the vendor.
Automating order routing shaves significant time off of the process, greatly reduces errors, and allows employees to spend their time performing other non-automated tasks.
In SkuNexus, an unlimited amount of order decision rules can also be set up to further enhance order routing. With this option, merchants are given supreme control - the OMS will route orders based on any criteria they wish.
Once the system has routed an order for fulfillment, a merchant must have the ability to continually see its status for any number of reasons.
At the most basic level, sending out periodic updates is an excellent business process to optimize the customer experience. In more advanced scenarios, an order may need to be adjusted mid-fulfillment. Without proper controls in place, locating it might be an exceedingly difficult maneuver.
The OMS can perform order tracking functions passively. As an order moves through fulfillment, the OMS is receiving data on its location, status, etc.
For example, perhaps 3 of 5 items in an order have been picked and packed and had a shipping label generated, and the other 2 items were routed to a dropshipper. Not only should the OMS know that the 3-item parcel is in the shipping department awaiting pickup by a carrier, but it should also be able to communicate with the dropshipping vendor and provide detailed information about the other 2 items.
Online retailers with physical stores have a significant opportunity to leverage those stores by merging them into their eCommerce operations. An OMS built for omnichannel is needed to make this happen.
Shoppers have spoken and the message is clear - they love BOPIS. In order to offer it as a fulfillment option, your brick-and-mortar stores will require a transition. Floor sales associates may need to be armed with barcode scanners and double as pickers. Your layout could require a separate area dedicated to order pickup.
From a SkuNexus perspective, BOPIS is not a radical departure, but simply the addition of inventory and fulfillment center(s). Because our platform allows for unlimited expansion, it is perfectly suited for a merchant who wishes to offer this option.
Ship-From-Store is a great way to maximize in-store inventory by using it to fulfill online orders. Once your physical stores are added to the OMS, SkuNexus will incorporate them into routing decisions just as it would any other warehouse.
This can be a necessary feature for a variety of reasons. Clearly defined user roles control what employees can see and do so that only information relevant to their work and responsibility level is accessible. In addition to fostering data security, it helps ensure employees will not be distracted by unnecessary material.
As with other key components of our system, SkuNexus makes managing user roles as simple as possible for the administrator. It is as easy as going through a list of items in the software, checking those items you want your user to see and which functions you&#;d like them to be able to perform.
Transparency is critical to establishing (and maintaining) trust in any relationship and truth in pricing is a bedrock of any business.
SkuNexus has multiple tiers of pricing/features based on the requirements of its users. Unlike many available software solutions which charge a % of revenue or on a per item/per fulfillment basis, we do not. This means that you will never be penalized for your growth.
We can accommodate merchants fulfilling a hundred orders a month to those doing a hundred an hour. Regardless of the size of your business, you will receive customer-centric service aligned with our core values.
Undoubtedly, you will have more questions to ask as you interview prospective management software providers. Your business goals, your products, your personnel, and a host of other factors make what you want and need highly specific.
At SkuNexus, we believe that knowledge is power. We look forward to hearing from you so we can learn about your business and share as much of our knowledge as possible.
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