How e-Commerce Technology Helps Scale e-Commerce Businesses

Scaling your e-commerce business means driving your revenue and sales without investing in many additional resources to see a profit. Today, all online businesses need to succeed and expand their reach to customers is a reliable, multifaceted supply chain technology that can help them manage order fulfillment, inventory, shipping, and warehouse management without causing overhead costs to skyrocket.

However, choosing the right e-commerce technology can be a tricky business if you don't know what your organization needs and how supply chain software can help. In this post, we'll discuss the importance of using a supply chain provider to help you scale your business and empower your team to deliver a more exceptional customer experience.

Automate Your Processes

If you run an e-commerce business and still rely on tedious, manual tasks to fulfill your orders, you're likely wasting much of the valuable time you could otherwise use to focus on growing your business and developing more products.

Though some businesses may fear that this kind of technology will replace employees, it actually frees up time for them to focus on more valuable endeavors and meaningful tasks, such as providing enhanced customer service. By automating processes with e-commerce software, many of your simple activities are handled by technology, including:

• Checking for new orders
• Generating picking lists
• Setting inventory reorder points
• Managing returns

Automation allows you to cross many tasks off your daily to-do list with minimal effort so you can pack and ship orders faster and reduce the time it takes for a product to go from your warehouse to your customer's doorstep. In a world where free two-day shipping is becoming the norm, it's critical your business keeps up with fulfillment optimization technology.

Reach Multiple Channels

These days, businesses have to use more than one channel if they want to reach more customers. For example, having a brick-and-mortar store in a busy downtown area might allow you to attract a strong customer base that frequents that area, but offering your products through multiple channels, such as various online marketplaces, allows you to reach potential customers worldwide.

To help scale your business, you can take advantage of e-commerce supply chain technology that gives you access to popular online marketplaces such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Target, Walmart, and Costco. By leveraging these channels, you can extend your reach to a wider pool of customers, helping you earn more sales.

Increase Delivery Satisfaction

An important aspect of improving customer service and growing your consumer base is putting yourself in the customer's shoes. Consider how you might be frustrated if you order something online and it's delayed by a few days or even a week. Then, think about how you might feel about the brand you ordered from if their customer service can't give you details about the shipment or tracking for your order.

As a customer, this may be enough to prompt you to never give your business to that company again. Using e-commerce technology allows you to increase productivity and efficiency throughout every tier of your business, from processing orders and customer information to allowing customers to track their orders the moment they ship. By increasing delivery satisfaction, you increase customer satisfaction and retention to grow your business's reputation.

Be Equipped for Busy Seasons

Having the capabilities to scale up for peak season is essential for e-commerce businesses. Whether your busy season is summer or near the holidays, you need automation technologies and robust fulfillment infrastructure to meet consumer demand without having your team feel stressed or ill-equipped to process, pack, and deliver orders on time.

This is why it's so crucial to invest in technology that can scale with your business, whether that means gearing up for a busy time of year or scaling down when orders a slower. With supply chain technology, such as unified commerce platforms, order management solutions, and inventory management platforms, your organization can conduct demand forecasting, access a virtual fulfillment network, and streamline operations across the supply chain.

The right e-commerce software and fulfillment provider can put the necessary resources and network at your disposal.

Keep Inventory in your Warehouse Organized

Whether you're processing 1,000 or 10,000 orders a day, it's critical to keep your warehouse inventory updated and organized. This is one of the key components of enhancing your customer experience.

When a customer places an order, they expect the packaging and shipping process to go smoothly until it reaches their door. However, if your organization has trouble processing order information or picking and packing orders promptly and correctly, it can easily frustrate your team members and cause you to lose customers.

By employing supply chain software solutions, you can combine your accounting, tracking, and ordering systems to ensure every order is processed correctly and your inventory is updated in real time. This type of e-Commerce software enables everyone on your team to see inventory quantities, so you can prevent stockouts and know when you need to order more supplies.

Gain Insights from Analytics

With modern fulfillment technology, you can gain valuable insights by collecting data about your customers' buying habits to learn how to better meet their needs. Predictive analytics data from your supply chain software enables you to determine when you need to scale your inventory up or back, which helps you avoid:

• Overbuying and getting stuck with excess product
• Running out of product when demand is high
• Running out of warehouse space
• Overpaying for inventory storage space you don't need

Data analytics can help you with other aspects of order fulfillment, such as real-time inventory data. This allows you to gain knowledge about what's driving your brand's success and how to identify cost-saving warehouse measures to keep operational costs low.

The Risks of Not Using Technology

Without the right e-commerce technology, your business could be moving along much slower than you'd like, making it more challenging to scale it and meet customer demands. If your current systems are completely separate, you may have to manually input data across all systems, which can waste valuable time. With the right software, you could spend more time focusing on improving your business and delivering superior products.

Let's look at some of the risks you may face in your e-Commerce business if you don't implement the right supply chain solutions:

• Data privacy and online security risks
• Vulnerabilities in your network leading to malicious attacks
• Human error leading to order and shipment problems
• Separate systems leading to more downtime
• Failing to communicate tracking of orders leading to unhappy customers
• Customer service agents having difficulty providing real-time inventory or order information
• Incompatible systems lagging or not combining data
• Supply chain delays leading to a poor customer experience

The Benefits of Osa Supply Chain Technology

With various supply chain technology options available for businesses today, it can be challenging to know which one is right for your e-commerce needs. Here are the top benefits of choosing Osa as your supply chain technology partner:

• Full visibility across the supply chain
• Increased time savings by reducing manual processes
• Increased order accuracy
• Decreased waste and labor costs, helping you save money
• Effective retail stock management
• Enhanced adaptability to meet industry demands by monitoring sales cycles
• Less reliance on outsourced IT by using a single platform for fulfillment, warehousing, and logistics activities 
• Improved preparations for peak sales seasons with intuitive forecasting tools
• Better ways to integrate processes across multiple channels

Get Started with Osa Today

Integrating new technology with your existing systems shouldn't be complicated. At Osa, our goal is to help you create a unified commerce platform so you can easily navigate order management, inventory, warehouse management, shipping, and strategic partnerships with ease. By automating your processes using our supply chain technology, you can deliver a more productive, efficient, and transparent supply chain.

With Osa, you can connect the dots between all platforms, sales channels, third-party logistics, and shipping systems with our fulfillment solutions to boost your business capabilities. To learn more about our supply chain platform, contact us today to learn how we can help you meet the ever-changing needs of your customers.