The process of order management starts from the moment a sale is made, and continues right through to delivery and any possible returns. This order involves several steps:
This involves actually taking the order details from your customer.
In ecommerce, this would typically mean someone completing checkout on your website or marketplace store. But could also involve completing an in-store transaction, or receiving some kind of order form sent via mail.
Payment is a key part of any order process. This is usually done as part of the checkout for online orders and completed immediately via card processor or a tool like PayPal.
However, it’s important to note that some payments take time to fully process. And you should not move onto the next stage of the order management process until this is complete.
Retailers with physical stores will obviously have the option of taking cash payments.
While wholesale or B2B sellers may choose to operate on an invoice model. This is where a buyer is quoted for a bulk buying order, then sent an invoice via post or email to be paid by a specific deadline date.
Once payment is successfully taken, the warehouse team can start the fulfilment process by picking the items.
There are four main methods when picking manually:
But many retailers are now opting to automate this with digital picking. This uses a barcode scanner to pick more orders, in less time and with greater accuracy.
Once picked, orders will be brought to a central desk ready for packing together.
This is an opportunity to make completely sure that you’re sending the right products to the right customers and in the most efficient way.
Here are some things to consider:
Once the items for each order are packed and sealed, the final fulfilment step is to actually ship it out.
This involves:
A quality order management system will allow you to do all this with a few clicks in the same platform.
Returns are an inevitable part of the order process. And handling them effectively is necessary for businesses wanting to uphold their customer experience reputation.
Key elements of returns are:
This can be a complicated process in itself. But a quality order management system will provide a single view for all your teams to complete their necessary tasks on a return from start to finish.