What Is Order Processing? 5 Steps & 10 Tips to Improve
With the advent of digital transformation, the e-commerce industry increased rapidly. Hence to keep with the increasing demands of the customers, businesses must improve their order process management. This is why more and more companies, in modern times, are opting for automated inventory and invoice software to track and manage orders effectively to enhance customer satisfaction.
What is order processing?
Order processing, a vital element of order fulfilment, is the workflow that warrants client orders to get planned accurately and transported to the correct place. Depending on the scale of your operations, order processing can take place in a warehouse or distribution centre to sync your order fulfilment.
What is an order processing software?
During the initial days of your business, you can easily manage your order processing manually. However, as your business grows, it can get complicated to carry out the order processing manually. This is where an order processing software steps in. With the help of order processing or inventory invoice software, you can efficiently reduce manual error and warrant client satisfaction, regardless of your business size.
Order processing explained
Order processing refers to the process or workflow that occurs after a client puts an order. This begins with affirming the products in stock, then picking items and transferring them to a sorting area. Next, the order gets compiled, packed, labelled and shipped to the client's address.
5 steps in order processing workflow
Here are 5 steps in the order processing workflow.
- 1. Order placement - When the customer places an order, the operation managers will place an order at the concerned warehouse.
- 2. Picking inventory - In this step, the specified items from the warehouse gets picked and shipped to the customer location.
- 3. Sorting - The picked item gets sorted based on the customer location to make the shipping easier.
- 4. Packing - This is the process of packing ordered goods into shipping boxes.
- 5. Shipping - This is the last step where the order gets transported to the final destination.
Types of Order Processing Systems
There are two types of order processing systems mentioned below:
- Traditional order processing systems - This is the manual process where all the order processing steps are hand-operated.
- Modern order processing systems - Under this type of order processing, businesses use modern technology to fulfil customer orders.
10 tips to improve order processing
Listed hereunder are ten ways to enhance your order processing.
- Workflow efficiency - By keeping all your order processes in sync, you can boost your workflow efficiency, which will eventually lead to increased profits.
- Automation - Automation helps you save your business's time and money by boosting the worker's productivity and enhancing customer experience. For instance, automation can expedite shipping operations and other general order fulfilment processes.
- Demand forecasting - By distinguishing your customer's previous buying trends, you can readily forecast future demands to plan and fulfil your order processing goals effectively.
- Stock level accuracy - Having a well-maintained stock level through inventory and invoice software can help you boost the efficiency of your order processing and better serve the customers.
- Warehouse management - By adopting a proper warehouse management system, you can increase productivity and reduce costs by keeping all the warehouse and stock data in a centralised system.
- Partial order processing - Processing orders partially can help you boost the shipping efficiency and cater to the customers' needs efficiently.
- Customer communication - Communicating with customers can help you build credibility as the customers always remain informed of their orders.
- Inventory control - Just like demand forecasting, inventory planning helps you keep up your stock level to fulfil orders effectively.
- ERP integration - An ERP system assists you in automating various business processes through a central database that gathers fundamental business data from every department.
- Mobile picking and barcode scanning - Shippers can use their mobile to scan barcodes on goods picked for an order to help businesses decrease picking mistakes.
Are you looking for inventory invoice software to automate your order processing? Choose Ankpal today. We are a leading invoice accounting software company rendering end-to-end e-invoicing solutions to our customers. To know more, call us at 63588 58915.
