Advancements in technology and the pandemic have changed the retail environment dramatically and accelerated the digital transformation. People have become more tech-savvy -especially the generation z- and to keep up with the changing customer habits, retailers have to implement the right technology at the right time.

2021 has proven that retailers need to prioritize the solutions/technologies that their operations need in order to stay competitive in the market, meet customer expectations and increase sales volume.

One of the significant reasons that make retailers come to change how their operations run is the inaccuracy of available products and unbalanced inventory between online and offline stores. Right omnichannel order management technology with a seamless real-time visibility function has become a game-changing move since retailers had to deal with these consequences. 

If You Can’t See It, You Can’t Sell It

Retailers expect their ERP systems to fulfill any need related to inventory. However, those systems’ main focus isn’t real-time operation track but inventory receiving, managing the inventory moves. In order to have success in operation, retailers should understand the intended use of each technology.

In order to deliver the perfect order, the internal processes of the operation should be streamlined from gaining real-time visibility of inventory to orders to be fulfilled. The right order management implementation gives the single look at the entire inventory regardless of the channel, helps employees to access the current status of an order, and most importantly enables HQ to manage configurations on the fly based on nodes -fulfillment centers-, stock level. This only gives the right result in operations where minute-to-minute inventory traceability is possible.

However, with an order and inventory management system, the inventory always gets ready for each possible sale, in every location in balance to minimize the lost sales, eliminate overcommitting and out-of-stocking problems and increase the sales volume accordingly.

See Your Way to a More Predictable Future

An order management system not only helps retailers to automatize the order process but also collects all the data from each action taken and turns it into actionable insights on a user-friendly dashboard that includes total revenue, revenue by channel, top products, and top fulfillment centers. 

It helps retailers better predict future stocks, more specifically the SKUs that will be purchased accurately by accessing past experiences in a user-friendly dashboard. Also, decision-makers leverage the data to create advanced business strategies to run their operations more efficiently, deliver a superior customer experience and become more competitive in the market by saying “yes” to their customers more often. 

Have Cost-effective Operations from Scratch 

Starting from the internal operation, an order management system removes much of the decision-making responsibility from employees, puts tasks in order automatically and implements the business rules determined to decide each order’s journey, and most importantly, updates the data periodically. This way, the labor cost needed in the operation can be reduced or be used in the storefront and customer services to strengthen customer relationships and build loyalty.

The system automatically finds the best location to fulfill an order, knows the right amount of stock level that is needed for each channel and allocates the inventory without any friction. This way, shipment, and transfer costs are reduced compared to traditional order processing as the real-time visibility gives the most up-to-date information to the operation and makes these actions accurate.

With Shopi’s Omnichannel Order Hub, gaining these capabilities to operations is accessible than ever! There is no time left to keep up with the retail environment and adopt the latest technologies. Thanks to Shopi’s seamless integration-ready APIs, the existing systems can be integrated within weeks and gives the entire operations a single picture of both order and inventory-related information in real-time. Omnichannel Order Hub once takes the inventory information from existing ERP, then keeps any data that a regular ERP can’t take as damaged item, returned item, etc., and gives the most accurate visibility of the entire inventory. In order to better manage your inventory, and keep your customers happy, meet Shopi!