If you sell a product then you’re already doing order management, even if you’ve never heard that term before.
Every sale your business makes involves a process that gets your product from “ordered” to “delivered”. That could include receiving a notification via email when a new order is placed, adding orders to a spreadsheet, placing a shipping label on a box, and many often overlooked aspects that can go into your customer receiving what they bought. That entire process is called order management.
At its most basic, order management helps keep track of what was sold, who bought it, and making sure the correct item goes to the right customer. But as your business grows, it can get more complicated do this manually, especially if you begin selling across multiple locations. You may have orders coming from different sources, being sent to multiple fulfillment partners or print-on-demand companies, and seemingly out of nowhere, you might find yourself spending more time trying to keep your head above water instead of focusing on your business.
Every business has different order management needs, but on average they typically include a few key aspects.
Starting with order capture, this involves where and how you’re receiving the order. This could be in your Shopify dashboard, and yes, even your spreadsheet. This is simply the process of recording that an order was placed.
You’ll also need to check your inventory counts to ensure that the ordered item is in stock and available for your customer. Then comes prepping and packaging the order, getting it ready for shipping with a label and tracking information, coordinating a pickup, and even extending to the post-fulfillment experience, like returns and refunds.
This is where implementing an order management system (commonly abbreviated to “OMS”) is key. Automating all of these small (but important) tasks drastically reduces the margin of error, saving time and money in the process.