Essential Features for Omnichannel Software for Success

Does Your Omnichannel Software Lack these Fundamental Features?

Inventory Management Software
Apr 17, 2019
Does Your Omnichannel Software Lack these Fundamental Features?

Samuel started his eCommerce journey three years ago selling official merchandise on Amazon. His astuteness and sheer persistence made sure his listings are always on the top of charts and he is taking home large sums of profit. Months changed into quarters and quarters into years and soon his eCommerce portfolio included thousands of products selling on multiple stores across the States and the internet.

Two and a half years into the business and his daily fulfillment were already reaching four figures. While this was a time for celebration, Samuel hardly got any time to sleep, let alone celebrate. He was already pushing his relatively small staff but to no resort. His operations were running into serious management constraints and inventory was going berserk. He learned the lesson the hard way, “fulfillment at large scale isn’t child’s play.”

With numerous online and offline sales channels, a range of fulfillment options, integrated, fast returns, and customer demands coming from all the places; Omnichannel selling requires humans, machines and pieces of different software to work together. As a result, many into omnichannel selling are looking to buy software-based solutions to bring them together. It’s essential to utilize a high quality omnichannel software that sits under the hood of your business and runs your omnichannel operation forward.

Let’s look at some of the vital things to look for when selecting this software for your business:

1. Real-time Inventory Syncing

The ultimate business motive of omnichannel selling is to make every applicable customer touchpoint buyable. However, omnichannel selling makes keeping track of inventory a nightmare. Therefore, no omnichannel software solution should go without having an inventory-syncing function. However, most inventory management solutions have orders to inventory synchronizing in place.

real time Inventory Syncing

The purpose of inventory sync in omnichannel arbitrages is to have spot data on gross, to-be-shipped and net inventory levels at all times. Real-time inventory synchronizing means your omnichannel software displays updated inventory numbers not every hour or when you click the update button but all the time. Your omnichannel software should reflect real inventory figures for all products and warehouses in each channel.

2. Returns Management

If there is one thing sellers worldwide collectively hate, are returns. I mean who returns a $3 iPhone cover. However, when you consider the fact that many skeptic buyers purchase stuff online because of the flexible return policies of popular marketplaces, omnichannel selling encourages you to embrace returns in your offline business too. Returns, particularly when you’re receiving many, aren’t exactly simple to manage. In omnichannel selling, you don’t only have to take care of returns in your online stores but also offline.

Returns Management

You should be thoughtful about going past standard one-dimensional returns and to provide a host of alternatives to deliver a top-notch customer experience, which are problematical to manage on the back-end. Therefore, your omnichannel software must have an integrated returns management system, allowing your support, fulfillment center and accounts teams to accomplish their specific tasks within a single platform.

3. Shipping Carriers Integration

Shipping carriers are often considered as the backbone of eCommerce industry. If your omnichannel software doesn’t integrate with the carriers you use, you’re missing out on an upgrade. Shipping carriers’ integration allows you to connect with your shipping account straight from the system running your omnichannel arbitrage.

When you fulfill hundreds of orders every day, you expect your shipping software to let operators print labels in bulk, track all shipments in a single dashboard – without the need of logging into your carrier’s account, and choose from many live shipping quotes to select the best one for your order.

4. Multi-warehouse Support

If you’re a bestselling brand selling thousands of products every day on multiple e-commerce stores, then one warehouse won’t suffice. Even if your single warehouse in the middle of America has the capability to meet every spike in demand, you are losing your customers owing to high shipping costs and shipping delays.

If you have one warehouse at a central location, you will delay shipments to population concentrations in areas far off. If you move the warehouse to one of the concentrations, you’re delaying shipments while adding shipment costs to your customers in other concentration. Because of these logistics encounters, sellers tend to have multiple, compact warehouses, catering to each population concentration than a single huge warehouse.

Inventory_Mgt_Request a quote

5. Brick & Mortar Stores Friendly

A persistent complaint by users of omnichannel software is this that the support for offline channels is often an afterthought to online channels’ support. The software tends to share a few features between online and offline channels but seldom have any exclusive features to offline channels. These sort of software solutions contain the full potential of your omnichannel operations.

The point-of-sales (POS) system used to process online payments should process in-store payments too; create fresh offline orders in your inventory management system alongside online ones. In addition, it should synchronize inventory between offline and online channels, ship online orders using inventory from physical stores, give online. Moreover, it should allow customers the option to collect from a physical store, view reports on offline sales alongside all your online channels.

Omnichannel is the Opportunity for Any Retail Brand

Omnichannel selling is unmanageable in absence of a quality software solution to back it up by taking care of the various omnichannel operation involved. I believe the above feature list will help you make the right decision and choose the most effective option for your business.

eSellerHub makes the perfect business sense if you’re looking for a custom omnichannel software built from the ground up to handle all the business challenges faced by you.

Inventory_Mgt_Talk to a specialist

Quick Inquiry

What is 1 x 4 ?

Quick Inquiry