Anyone who works in product and service sales knows that order management can become quite a headache if the company doesn't have a well-structured process. After all, customers expect to receive the right product or service promptly.
It's no surprise that order management involves several areas of a company—from the sales department to inventory and logistics. All these departments need to work together in an organized manner to improve customer satisfaction and, of course, increase overall business efficiency.
In this sense, automating order management eliminates manual work and minimizes the possibility of errors, ensuring that all processes are aligned and that the involved areas can quickly access sales, inventory, requests, and customer data.
Continue reading this article to learn more about the importance of technology in order management, the advantages of structuring processes, how to implement automation in order management, and how to choose the best tool for this purpose.
What is order management, and why is it critical?
In companies' day-to-day operations, order management consists of a series of processes to receive, process, and fulfill customer requests. It involves steps such as inventory management, packaging, and shipping.
Investing in an order management system is essential to closely monitor all these stages, and identify bottlenecks and potential improvements. Therefore, organizing order management at your company is vital because it:
Promotes operational efficiency, minimizing possible errors
Provides greater visibility of stock, avoiding shortages of products to be sent to customers
Ensures real-time order tracking
Increases customer satisfaction by processing orders more quickly and accurately
Enables adaptation to changes in order volume, seasonality, and market demands
How does process automation help with order management?
Software designed for this purpose can automatically register new orders, categorize data for better analysis, and facilitate agility in processes—from order receipt to delivery—resulting in faster customer service.
Furthermore, with the automation of order management, repetitive tasks become a thing of the past, allowing teams to spend less time on routine activities and focus on more strategic actions for the organization's growth.
The benefits are numerous:
Automating manual tasks improves the accuracy of processes like order approval and inventory checking.
Service becomes even faster, contributing to an enhanced customer experience.
Data capture enables more accurate forecasting and tracking of all stages of the process.
Automated processes save time and resources, speeding up operations.
Additionally, automated systems can be integrated with other business software, such as CRMs and ERPs, providing a more comprehensive view of the business.
How do you choose the best order management tool?
Choosing the best tool to automate order management for your business depends on several factors. Firstly, you need to understand your company's order management workflow and have an overview of how each step works.
After that, it's necessary to assess the entire operation: Where are the faults? How are you capturing data for analysis? Why are orders being delayed? Based on these considerations, you can choose the best tool for order management by considering the following factors:
Scalability: How does the platform or software handle an increase in order volume?
Ease of use: Does the software have a user-friendly interface or require team training?
Support: How does the platform assist with problems and unforeseen events?
Integration: Does the tool easily integrate with other systems?
Supplier: Which company is providing the system, and what reputation does it have in the market?
If you still have doubts about the best tool for order management, remember that Qntrl can transform the way your company handles this operation. How? By offering workflow automation to monitor each step of the process and centralizing all orders and data on a single platform.
With Qntrl, your company can increase the speed of order registration, customer service, and collaboration between all teams involved. Furthermore, this low-code platform allows easy integration with other tools that your company already uses. At the end of the process, you'll have consistent data to closely monitor process performance, even for order cancellations.
