The effectiveness of your order processing system is definitely a make or break factor for your business. If you’re managing a swiftly growing one and you just would like to save yourself the trouble of late shifts for packing and shipping products, orders going to the wrong address, and other unwanted circumstances of the likes, you should probably be considering integrating an order fulfillment software to help you win in this part of management.

Order fulfillment software programs are tools used by expanding businesses to effectively manage their sales by efficiently fulfilling orders of their customers.

Its key function is automations of several business management points that would usually consume so much time, effort and resources when done manually. These automations include warehouse and inventory management, order picking and processing, and shipping and tracking. This system boosts efficiency, accuracy and reduces error from tedious, time-intensive tasks.

An important component to consider is that the software you get should be able to integrate easily with your information technology (IT) system to give you a seamless and secure, accessible, detailed, real-time reporting on your order processes.

What can order fulfillment software do?

• Create new orders
• View, search, and edit existing orders
• View inventory
• Forecast inventory levels
• Receive inventory alerts (e.g., low stock levels, out-of-stock notifications)
• Check and verify returns
• Integrate with your Web-based shopping cart or other customer ordering system
• Manually enter orders as needed
• View invoices
• Run reports
• Receive email alerts on order status

What are the benefits of order fulfillment software?

• Improved customer service

Order fulfillment software tracks customer purchases and accounts. Efficiently managing your business processes and warehouses enable your customers to get what they have purchased accurately and on time. Needless to say, giving them a satisfactory customer service experience can give you a good boost in your overall business sales.

• Process orders anytime and anywhere!

Since order fulfillment software processes your customers anytime and anywhere, it gives you the perfect opportunity to expand your market. Your customers can enjoy placing orders online while you reap the benefits of your software’s automated processing and shipping functions.

• Centralized data

Order fulfillment software allows all your employees to access data when they need to handle tasks for inventory and warehouse management. Seamless sharing of information in one automated, organized and centralized system, remarkably reduces chances of errors in processing new orders.

• Save money and time

Not only money, but time is your  most valuable asset in running a business. Automation brought by your order fulfillment software can save you both by reducing human error.  Think about it, leveraging human problem solving for higher-level tasks is much more productive than sending employees out to hunt down a product and bring it to shipping. 

• Value for money

Drastically cut down overhead costs with fulfillment softwares since you won’t need to spend time going over your orders manually. Needless to say, you can also free up employees for other tasks without worrying about them manually keeping track of processed orders.

Basic Order Fulfillment Software features you should look out for:

• Inventory and order information management
• Easily accessed by staff and employees
• An end-to-end status updating and tracking to order history, opt-in/opt-out, repeat orders, wish lists, gift cards/shopping, and customer loyalty programs.
• Inventory control and accurate forecasting.
• Easy integrations with your existing information technology systems and other software tools you use in your business
• Provides consistent, interconnected information to everyone in your organization

Best software for order fulfillment 

Zoho Inventory

A special component of Zoho, a company that specializes in software development and web-based business tools; Zoho Inventory gives you a quick overview of all your sales orders in a single dashboard so you can see how many orders are pending, invoiced, packaged, or delivered. Once you've confirmed each sales order, you can automatically convert the order details into packing slips and find real-time shipping costs for each package before you send it to your customer. After you ship a package, you may gain your customers' trust by keeping them informed of the order status. Zoho integrates with most of the major e-commerce platforms and business tools.

BizAutomation

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, comprehensive cloud-based business solution for your fulfillment needs, BizAutomation is one of the renowned ones in the industry. It is designed to streamline all data and business management reports in a back office. It tracks order and fulfillment real-time and is equipped with a responsive customer relationship management system. Aside from its fulfillment functionality, it comes with four other platforms: Accounting, e-commerce and professional services. 

Fishbowl Inventory

One of the cloud-based fulfillment software that is one top of its game is the Fishbowl Inventory. It integrates seamlessly with Quickbook platforms and has an automated wireless barcoding system that is useful for warehouse inventory. Not to mention that it integrates well with other big names in the warehouse and shipping industry such as UPS and FedEx. Fishbowl Inventory enables payment transactions via credit cards and also monitoring of your customers’ shopping carts.

InOrder

InOrder is one of the most flexible business solutions in the fulfillment world that specializes in conforming to the specific business requirements. From item personalization to digital distribution, it allows you to personalize and customize details to your needs. What makes it stand out from other softwares is its accurate real time feature of updating data. Whether your customers place orders online, via call or at your physical retail store; this software keeps all of your business’ information accurately recorded. It also has its own customers loyalty program.

Megaventory

Megaventory is a cloud-based order and inventory management solution aimed at medium-sized businesses. Its features include order fulfillment, manufacturing management, invoicing and reporting. Megaventory offers comprehensive customer support. It provides inventory at multiple locations and takes care of the entire order fulfillment process, from taking orders to contacting suppliers to shipping. It also assists in preparing sales quotes, shipping quotes, drop-shipping and consignment details.

Shipbob

ShipBob is a cloud-based fulfillment software that will help merchants increase sales by improving customer experience through fast and accurate order processing. It is designed to handle high volumes and quick turnarounds, so your customers get what they order as quickly as possible, regardless if you’re shipping out 100 or 100,000 orders a month. ShipBob’s order fulfillment system can help you optimize warehouse efficiency, improve accuracy for inventory and orders, and increase profitability. It has all the basic software fulfillment functionalities and integrates well with major e-commerce platforms.

Brightpearl Fulfillment

BrightPearl is known for its remarkable automated features for order fulfillment and warehouse management processes. Whether you are running a big or small business, BrightPearl integrates well with leading shipping management integrations like Amazon FBA and 3PL providers. It also gives your customers flexible delivery options like drop-shipping and partial shipments. Inventory, orders, warehouses, shipping, and fulfillment are all managed in one single system, therefore information is synced in real-time across all channels. Not to mention accurate real time automation of information like  inventory levels, order status, shipping process, and accounts as soon as an order is placed.

Conclusion

With the advances in technology and software solutions, businesses no longer have to rely on outdated methods to track their inventory, invoicing, billing, order picking, and shipments. Nowadays, advanced order fulfillment systems takes care of the job for you leaving no room for mistakes so you can save money, time and effort while you work on other important things that requires more attention. By understanding your needs and objectives, you will be able to decide well which order fulfillment software best suits your business. Just make sure that it has all the basic key functionalities mentioned in this article and it integrates well with your IT setup.