How an Integrated Order Management System Can Nurture Your Business

Jan 19
18:38

2012

Molly Griffin

Molly Griffin

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Learn how an order management system can enable multichannel retailers can not only provide a better customer experience but, they can also put more of a focus on what they do best – selling products through accurate inventory management and more.

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 Many small and mid-size retailers are frustrated with inefficient back-office processes that often require repeating certain tasks for online and offline channels. Whether retailers realize it or not,How an Integrated Order Management System Can Nurture Your Business   Articles such a lack of coordination can hinder their ability to effectively compete in a multichannel world. While integrated solutions are available, mid-size retailers believe such platforms have been designed for larger businesses, making them either too expensive or beyond the capabilities of a smaller retailer. A single solution expressly designed for small and mid-size retailers can give retailers the support they need to be more productive and to stay on top of quickly changing retail technology and regulations. By using an order management solution, retailers are not only able to provide a better customer experience but, they can also put more of a focus on what they do best – selling products.

It’s a fact of doing business today that retailers need to be in a variety of channels. For many small and mid-size retailers, this could mean operating a consumer-facing website and catalog as well as a mail-order wholesale business. Retailers need a powerful database that gives them the ability to easily view any customer’s complete history with the brand across all channels. The result is that customers have a more consistent experience with your brand and customer service representatives are less frustrated.

Retailers and eCommerce Merchants also need to be able to integrate inventory across channels so they’ll always know what’s in stock. And they must be able to address many topical issues they face in today’s competitive market. This includes offering mobile-optimized Web sites, Web 2.0 functionality so they can put customer reviews on their Web site or allow visitors to forward an item to a friend, and providing cross-sell merchandising to highlight several items that are similar to what a customer is already viewing. In addition, they have to address PCI Data Security Standards Compliance.

An Integrated Approach

When it comes to purchasing luxury bedding online, customers expect a customized experience in which they can easily view different materials, patterns and colors to find the right one. Aaron Parnes, marketing manager of ShopBedding.com, realized the company’s eCommerce platform wasn’t able to meet these unique needs. The site was built on an aging unsupported system, which was vulnerable to security breaches and downtime The company started as a bedding wholesaler over fifty years ago, and recently opened their online retail division, selling luxury bedding directly to the public at significantly discounted prices. Their product line includes pillow shams, dust ruffles, bed skirts, satin pillow cases and complete satin bedding sets to meet a customer’s every bedding need.

 

As the number of online orders increased and the business grew, it became more difficult and time-consuming to manage the daily processes involved in inventory management, order fulfillment, and shipping. They knew that in addition to a new eCommerce platform, they needed an order management solution that would help streamline and automate their labor-intensive processes. At the time, they were manually entering order information several times into different systems, which left the door open to data entry errors. They were using QuickBooks Enterprise Edition for order management but it didn’t have the features and functionality needed to handle the increased volume. Aaron & his team started an extensive search to find a new eCommerce system that the company could customize while considering cost. In addition, they looked for the right solution that would be capable of managing and fulfilling orders while meeting their growing business needs. 

 

Solution

After a comprehensive review, Shop Bedding selected Magento Enterprise as their shopping cart platform because it met their criteria for being open source, widely used, and extensible. In addition, they found that Magento provided strong support from their development team for the short and long term. They also learned about Dydacomp’s Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and compared it to systems that were much higher in cost. M.O.M. is the leading integrated PCI compliant order management software built for eCommerce, multi-channel and distribution businesses. Ultimately, Shop Bedding selected M.O.M. for their back end system, preferring it over the alternative options due to its lower cost and easier compatibility with their other systems.

 

In order to achieve a seamless integration between the two systems, they selected ChannelBrain’s BizSyncXL™ application. BizSyncXL provides scheduling tasks to synchronize inventory, prices and order integration. Each task can be automated to facilitate the business rules and integration between M.O.M. and Magento. 

 

Results

After Shop Bedding implemented M.O.M., BizSyncXL and Magento, they were able to completely streamline their business processes and launch their new site. The company was previously using three systems for credit cards, order management and shipping, requiring extensive manual work to pass the data through each one. Now BizSyncXL brings orders into M.O.M. from Magento with the click of a button. Using M.O.M. and First Data, the credit card numbers are stored all within M.O.M., allowing the office staff to batch charge the cards automatically without having to manually enter credit card numbers into separate systems. Since M.O.M. is a PCI-compliant solution, the credit card information remains encrypted, providing Shop Bedding with the necessary security. M.O.M. then passes any accounting data to QuickBooks with a simple import file. This has enabled them to significantly reduce the number of hours spent on data entry and more effectively manage their business-critical processes.

 

“By using the three systems of Magento, M.O.M. and BizSyncXL. we now have the functionality to create a world-class shopping experience for our customers on the front-end while streamlining all of our processes on the back end. This gives us the tools to drive new sales, increase productivity, and grow our business,” said Aaron.