- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
An optimized workflow in today’s unpredictable and competitive markets translates to much-needed efficiency, productivity, and profitability. The last year caught many businesses unaware, whether drying up demand or putting pressure on operations. It taught offline sellers to move online and online sellers to be flexible. Today’s brands must find eCommerce solutions to challenges that don’t yet exist and establish the capacity to manage change before change sneaks upon them.
To do that, they must have the right attitude, approach, and understanding of their workflows. The second ingredient is technology. Automation tools are continually evolving, offering up new opportunities in eCommerce automation. Let’s go over some tips and strategies for getting started with automation in your business.
What are business processes and workflows?
Before we talk about what to automate and how to do it, we must clear up some terms. The terms business processes and automation are used interchangeably, but there are some differences between the two. First, let’s start with some similarities. Both consist of sequences of repeatable tasks essential to the successful operation of businesses.
However, business processes outsourcing is closely aligned with business goals and involves some deliverables, internal employees, customers, or a combination thereof. A business process could include onboarding a new client or involving multiple departments to manage a contract for a new order.
A workflow, by contrast, is limited only to internal employees and back-end processes. An example would be a sales rep seeking approval to accept a customer quote.
Why should you automate these processes?
There are many obvious benefits to automation, ranging from boosting employee productivity, maintaining higher data accuracy, and cutting costs. With more time to serve customers, reps can increase the customer experience and grow sales.
More importantly, automation helps you to work effectively even as your business environment changes. In the age of uncertainties, automation allows you the flexibility to experiment, change how you do things, and utilize human assets to do what you do best.
Admittedly, replacing human effort with digital processing is a principal reason for automation. When something is automated, the need for human intervention (such as entering orders into a system or checking data) gets eliminated. Furthermore, a workflow can combine both machines and humans if required. A powerful automation engine in your eCommerce platform, good system integration, and an automation strategy are required.
Some eCommerce automation ideas
If you’re an established eCommerce business, you likely carry different product lines and deal with a large and diverse customer base. As such, you have many reasons to automate various aspects of your business.
Client onboarding. Whoever you’re selling to, you want to make a great first impression. Automation can streamline account setup and simplify decision-maker involvement, particularly if you sell to different customers, such as end-consumers, vendors, and suppliers.
Lead nurturing. When a customer is interested in your product, you must engage with them and ensure they turn into buyers. You must also reach the right person at the right time with the right material – and automation makes that possible.
Order approvals. If you sell B2B, your customers will likely require to go through several order approvals before you ship the product to them. Automations make it easy to put this process on autopilot so sales reps can focus on more productive tasks.
Quoting. Some businesses carry products that require a quote or negotiated pricing. Allowing customers to request a quote is not enough – automating quote management saves much-needed time for back-office staff.
Checkout. Long, convoluted, or impersonal checkout experiences lead to lost sales. Automation helps you A/B test and offer different payment, shipping, and invoicing options to provide buyers with the best possible customer experience.
Sales follow-up. After the deal is finalized, you may want to send a follow-up email to gather feedback, remind of a promotion, or upsell a product. Automating these processes allows reps to spend time on actual personalization.
Returns management. It isn’t easy to coordinate returns without some form of automation. Returns involve accounting, inventory, suppliers, and other departments. Furthermore, return policies can differ from one item to the next. With automation, the time it takes to perform these activities can be drastically reduced.
How do you automate eCommerce?
Getting started with automation requires some preparatory work first. Here are some tips for getting started with eCommerce automation.
1. Determine your repetitive tasks
Create a list of tasks that might be excellent candidates for automation. Focus on tasks that involve lots of data handling, coordinating, and back-and-forth between departments. Some examples include emailing, reporting, data entry, and so on.
2. Set your business goals
Whether you’re looking to improve back-office efficiency or increase sales, set aside some indicators to let you measure the success of your efforts. For example, if staff manually submits orders to the warehouse, automation should boost the daily number of orders processed.
3. List and analyze your processes
Every process can be narrowed down to several steps. For example, an order workflow can be a simple one that adds orders to a shopping list. Or, it can request input from different managers, submit the order to the correct warehouse, and notify the customers of the order status.
4. Determine what can be cut out
When reviewing processes, identify tasks that take the most time. Your employees, as are time trackers, activity managers, and other tools, are an excellent source of this information. Other times, you can pinpoint bottlenecks by merely taking the time to analyze steps one by one.
5. Start small and grow in complexity
Start with a simple process and measure its impact on operations. Monitor results to determine if the solution meets your desired objectives. In either case, your eCommerce solution must have flexible automation options that help you get closer to your stated goals.
Conclusion
The eCommerce market is heating up with no end in sight. New entrants appear in virtually every industry, and online purchasing is more convenient than ever. Automation keeps you ahead of the curve by maximizing the resources at your disposal – starting from your human resources, technology, customers, and data.
In the digital commerce world, change happens fast and disrupts long-stanging processes. When selecting an eCommerce automation solution, think with flexibility in mind. This approach will allow you to grow with changing requirements, customer expectations, and your business environment.
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link