Go Multi-channel to Multiply your Sales

Technology is fast changing the way retailers are selling and customers are shopping. Today customers keep shifting back and forth between offline and online channels. If retailers want to keep up with this pace then they need to quickly adapt to dynamic customer behavior and extend their presence on multiple channels. New age customers are always online so they expect their favorite brands to do the same. To satisfy the needs of customers, retailers will have to slowly expand operations to other selling channels such as online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, e-commerce platforms, social shopping sites, etc. While it may seem overwhelming at first, taking your business multi-channel is the way to go. Let’s deep dive into the many boons of multi-channel selling.

Wider Customer Base

No single shopper is the same and no shopper buys only from one place anymore. Also, customers start their buying process with research first. If they don’t find you where they are looking, say for example on Amazon, or on the web, then they will most likely move to your competitor that can be easily located. On the other hand, some will prefer to mix online and offline shopping, while others straight away visit online marketplaces to fulfill their needs. When retailers establish their presence on multiple channels, they expose their business to a wider audience. By adopting a multi-channel approach, you can attract new customers to your business, and bring existing customers online to provide them the flexibility to shop at their own convenience and time, a privilege they don’t have in a physical store.

Hike in Sales

The main aim of any seller is increased profit by engaging customers as much as possible. Multi-channel selling gives the opportunity to create many engagement points for the customer to make purchasing decisions easy. Additional channels allow retailers to communicate with existing and prospective customers via many touchpoints, helping them to increase their brand visibility and ultimately boost sales.

Get Closer to the Customer

Taking from the previous point, with multiple touchpoints for customer engagement, sellers can glean abundant data on their customers and their buying behavior. This wealth of data can then be used to provide personalized communication for every customer. For example, if a customer browsed for shoes the last time he visited your e-commerce store, you can show him specific ads about shoes on all engagement points to encourage a purchase. Or if a customer added items in their cart but abandoned it later, retailers can send them a discount voucher on those items to push them to complete the purchase. This kind of data-driven marketing can have a positive impact on consumer buying.

Money Tree for Lesser Known Brands

New online channels are giving smaller and lesser known merchants a chance to compete with popular brands. It is only natural that new shoppers coming across your brand for the first time will be distrustful. But if you have a store on a renowned online marketplace, say Amazon or eBay, then that’s your ticket to authenticity. In fact, nearly 65% of shoppers said they felt more comfortable buying from an unknown brand if it was selling on a well-known marketplace. Customers that shop through multiple channels spend more and there is increased customer loyalty and profitability.

Low Risk in Testing New Markets

Before the rise of e-commerce, business expansion was usually regarded as opening up a new physical store. Thanks, to the boom in e-commerce, setting up online stores or adding new channels have become much faster and cheaper. Speaking on the aspect of costs associated with putting up a new store, if your brick-and-mortar store doesn’t do well, all that investment in renting out the place, on interiors and employing staff goes down the drain.  With multi-channel selling, you minimize this risk. If one channel doesn’t work for you, then you can simply close your account. You will still have a backup in the form of other e-commerce stores, your website and even your brick-and-mortar store to keep the business afloat.

Finally

There are several variables to consider before expanding your business to multiple channels. But be rest assured, the gains of multi-channel selling trump the challenges that lie in the process. Multi-channel selling is the only strategy that can push retailers to stay in the game.

Why your business needs an inventory management software?

A shocking amount of capital is tied up in inventory. Inventory along with accounts receivable and accounts payable has tied up $1.1 trillion in cash – equivalent to 7% of the U.S. GDP. (Source: REL)

In fact, U.S. retailers are currently sitting on about $1.43 in inventory for every $1 of sales they make.

Imagine the effect it will have on your small and medium sized business if you are managing your inventory manually or not managing at all.

As an online retailer, you do not want to tie up additional capital inventory carrying liability. Especially if you are still an old school managing it on a spreadsheet.

And no Kidding,

Your challenges for managing Inventory manually will cost you a fortune. For instance

• It may happen at times that you run short of resources to lease your facilities, and hence you may end up operating a rather larger and ineffective warehouse then you need.
• Under such circumstances, Inventory Management spreadsheet is often prone to errors and will drain you to the last drop of your time and energy in maintaining the same.  
• You will never be assured of accuracy, and it’s not worth a risk.

Poor management is one of the top-notch reason why small business fail. Though Inventory Management Software is a crucial tool for retailers, 46% of SMB’s with 11-500 employees still don’t currently track inventory or use a manual inventory process.

It is vital to keep track of Inventory Management, as it directly affects the cost and time of your business. Hence, automating Inventory Management is crucial for business.  Automation facilitates your business in terms of ROIs, Diversification and most importantly in.. ( Click to read)

How Orderhive’s order management app can decrease delivery time?

With the evolution of smartphones, today, they are not only used to make calls or text messages, but also, allows you process complex business operations in the most simplest ways.

Lately, mobile apps are proving to be a real time-saver for many business owners that allow a quick access to their important data and manage operations at the tip of the finger.

In this article, we will discuss on how using an order management app will help ecommerce business owners decrease delivery time.

There are many order management apps, however, some of them are either costly while others offer complex interface. If you are looking for simpler and cost-effective app, then Orderhive is the answer.

Orderhive Order Management App

Not being able to fulfill your orders in time can be frustrating for both, you and your customers. To eliminate such ugly scenarios, Orderhive management app will allow you process and ship orders from anywhere, anytime. Offering easiest order management tools and integration with leading shipping solutions(ShipStation, AfterShip, EasyPost), Orderhive app has already proven to be an ideal order management solution for many e-commerce business owners.

Key features that you can expect from Orderhive order management app

1. Automatically pushes order status

As soon as you create shipments or change order status, those changes will be automatically pushed to your channel in real-time. This means, you’ll eliminate the risk of fulfillment delays and boost customer service experience by offering in time delivery service, always.

2. Create full and partial shipments

There maybe times when you want to fulfill your sales orders partially, which means you want to ship certain products now and others later. Orderhive’s order management app allows you to do so. Quickly create shipments on-the-go for the ones you want to process, and gain access to the history of all your fulfilled products in real-time. This way, you can easily process orders as per your customer’s requirements, as well as, ensure you don’t miss out any order.

3. Print packing slips, shipping labels, and pick lists

One of the major advantage, you can also create packing slips and shipping labels. This way you can easily print them and make your package ship-ready from the place you are. Boost customer experience and bid goodbye to delay in order fulfillment, especially for those urgent requests from your customers.

4. Update shipping and tracking information on the go

Integrated with leading shipping solutions to enhance your fulfillment processes, Orderhive’s management app updates shipping information like carrier name, tracking number to your Orderhive account immediately when an order is processed. This makes it easy to access informations immediately and provide updates to customers whenever they contact you.

5. Create invoices with just a few taps

Another time-saving advantage, you can create invoices and insert a customized message for every sales orders that is to be fulfilled. Invoice generated via Orderhive management app are simple and have an aesthetic appeal, which you can quickly email it to your customers in just a few taps on your mobile screen. Also, Orderhive being well-connected with Xero accounting software, therefore integrating your Xero account with Orderhive will automatically push products and customers that are fetched from the invoice and immediately export the same to your Xero account.

Adopting Orderhive’s management app, you’ll be able to fulfill order management processes quickly and efficiently, helping you to save loads of time, money, and effort.
Available on Google Play Store: https://goo.gl/LQxzQ3

How Companies Can Solve “Out Of Stock Issues”: Tips And Tricks?

The worst situation for any retailer, is not being able to fulfill customer’s orders due to unavailable stock. Because, unable to process orders in time directly hampers the brand value (customer service + profits).

What are the key factors that lead to out of stock scenarios and how you can get rid of them?

1- Inefficiency in the supply chain process

No matter how good you build up relationship with your suppliers, if they are unable to supply you with products when needed the most will create an imbalance in your fulfillment process that leads to delay in order processing and most of the time, you’ll have to deny your customers. Apart from offering a bad customer service, you also lose profits for your business.

Tip:

Ensure your suppliers will provide you with inventory whenever needed, and are flexible to delivery at anytime, anywhere. This will ensure products are always available for instant order fulfillment.

For instance: When you realize a particular product is out of stock on receiving customer’s order, it automatically delay your fulfilment process. To avoid such cases, dealing with suppliers who can directly pack and ship your customers orders themselves can be one of the solutions to overcome out-of-stock situations.

Trick:

Having an integrated inventory management/dropshipment system will help you consolidate all your inventory and supplier’s data at one place, allowing you a real-time visibility of your stock levels. This will make it easy for you to enhance supply chain process, which is crucial for eliminating out of stock scenarios.

2- Inaccurate inventory level updates

You may be receiving your purchase orders in time that allows you to immediately fulfill your customer’s orders. But, if stock levels are not updated for every sale that is made will frequently result to out of stock situations.

Tip:

Once you ship your customer’s order ensure your stock levels are instantly updated across all your channels to maintain accurate inventory counts and know when to reorder products.

For instance: You sell over multiple platforms and receive an order for one of your channels, now updating stock levels for that particular product across all your channels will automatically eliminate the risks of not having products, when needed the most.

Trick:

Adopting an inventory management system will help you sync all your products in one system and auto-updates inventory levels across all your channels, whenever a sale is made. Doing so, you’ll permanently eliminate the risk of inaccurate inventory levels.

3- No safety lock practice

Though updating inventory counts after every sale is crucial to maintain a positive stock availability, but a relative function is also to safely stock products that will help you overcome out of stock issues.

Tip:

Know your product performance and calculate safety lock for the best selling ones that can help you fulfill and process orders in time, even when stock levels are inaccurate. Yes, you heard it correct.

For instance: During festivals, you’ll experience huge rush of orders and this is when maximum chances of out of stock issues arises. Considering such situations, you can buffer additional stock level for all those products that you think will sell good.

Trick:

Adopting a centralized system for managing inventory, means all your stock ins and outs are recorded at one place. This way, it will become easy to track fast-moving products for which you can calculate and add a safe lock and ensure orders are always processed as promised.

In the end, running out of products can hamper you from continual growth, however focusing on the above factors and practicing the tips and tricks will ensure your customers always get what they want.

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Macy’s Inventory Strategies: What every retailer can learn?

In this modern world, an organized inventory flow becomes necessary to fulfill your customer’s need coming from multiple sources.

With the advent of technology, modern consumers have multiple ways (that include in-store, online, call-center, mobile, etc.) to browse and purchase products they like. However, there are many retailers who still find it a challenge to reach out every customer’s needs due to supply chain issues. This why retailers need to consider Inventory management best practices.

Having a successful inventory management practice in place, you can eliminate the risk of out-of-stock situations, while at the same time you ensure that inventory costs does not affect the bottom line of the business. This means there should be a balance between demand and supply.

In this article we will discuss, how Macy’s – a successful mid-range chain of department stores (850 stores in total) manages their supply and meets the demand for all channels.

Macy’s has mastered inventory and you can, too!

Today, Macy’s is considered to be one of the biggest brick-and-mortar store offering some of the best deals. Now, that doesn’t mean the department store is obvious to the advantages of online retail. Their much thoughtful decision, to invest in omnichannel solutions is an effort to offer better, and seamless shopping experience.

Omni-channel is very much about “inventory optimization through technology,” said Terry Lundgren, chairman, president and CEO of Macy’s Inc., in a talk delivered last week in Tucson. Inventory visibility across all stores and channels is the key enabler, he added.

Macy’s key inventory management practices that benefited shoppers and helped them as well, improve inventory optimization  

– Real-time visibility

In most cases, retailers display 80% products in their showroom. Hence, 20% of their inventory are left unsold, as they are not seen. And, product visibility has a major role for inventory optimization. However, adopting a real-time program has helped Macy’s improve their supply chain flow. They can now allow customers get an access to all their inventory with the help of technology, even if is not present in the showroom. This way customers can order for the product that is in the warehouse, which is then shipped to the them.

For example, you are selling footwear and one of your customer is looking for size 8, however, it is not present in-store, but you have it in your warehouse. In such cases, you can allow customers make a purchase for the size 8, which later can be procured and shipped to the customer.

– Omnichannel

Having a real-time visibility has no doubt helped Macy’s to manage inventory, however offering omnichannel solutions was their key to a successful inventory optimization.

Investing millions in an effort to allow customers an ability to purchase products whenever and however they want, has made Macy’s one of the leading department stores. Their omnichannel solutions included flexibility in order fulfillment for customers shopping in-store, online, or even a combination of both including in-store pickups and allow home delivery, too..

What can you learn?

Having a real-time software  for your inventory across all your stores and warehouses is a must to manage your supply chain. And, adopting a real-time inventory solution, you can come with unique inventory optimization tactics to improve omnichannel shopping experience. With more and more retailers experimenting different ways to offer omnichannel solutions, it’s time for you to seriously think about leveraging the above best inventory management practices to better serve your customers in this modern retail world.