The Famous Rubber Duck
The rubber duck was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame this year!
Check out the details here http://www.toyhalloffame.org/toys/rubber-duck.
Of course, we think it’s cool. We put a lot of thought into our selection of rubber ducks each year. Do you have a favorite?
Opportunities for B2B Companies Using eCommerce
Do you know who all your customers are? If you said yes and you don’t have an eCommerce store, then how do you know you’re not missing out on opportunities to grow your business? How do you really know you’re reaching everyone you can? In addition to their traditional customer bases, B2B companies with eCommerce stores can attract new customers in surprising ways.
Anyone browsing the internet could find your eCommerce store. If, for example, he or she happens to work for a small company that can use your services or products, you’ve reached a potential customer! And, in many cases, consumers are also creating an entirely new market for B2B companies.
An article by Paul Demery, “B2B Leaps Onto the Web” in the November 2013 issue of the Internet Retailer magazine, discusses new skills and technologies B2B companies are using for these new opportunities. From managing inventory and pricing, to redesigning eCommerce stores to accommodating additional customer types, to connecting with the new customer markets, B2B companies are taking advantage of these opportunities to grow their businesses.
Some statistics cited in the article from B2B respondents of surveys:
- 44% said average order values are higher through their eCommerce sites than orders placed by phone, fax, or in person. 11% said their average order values decreased.
- 24% said they remain the same, and 20% said they don’t know.
- 52% said their customer support costs decreased for customers who place orders through eCommerce sites.
- 56% said they profit only if customers use the eCommerce sites without their assistance.
- 44% said they expect to improve their order sizes through eCommerce, and 43% expect eCommerce to result in more returning customers.
As the article shows, managing and keeping product information accurate and consistent for multiple customer bases, such as other businesses and direct consumers, possibly in multiple countries, is a big challenge.
If you are a B2B company considering an eCommerce store, you could be taking the first step in attracting new business. A system with a central database is crucial. When thinking about your ERP system, keep these capabilities in mind:
- Recommend related products for more selling opportunities.
- Make sure customers can search for products and get results quickly.
- Help your customers help themselves. Let them maintain their own account information, and let them tell you how often they want to hear from you.
- Provide pictures of your products where possible.
- If items are backordered, tell your customers when to expect them.
- Offer personalization.
- Automatically send reminders when items are left in carts but not purchased.
- Establish B2B accounts separate from consumer accounts.
- Keep your pricing structure appropriate for the customer type. For example, don’t sell an item to a consumer for less than what you charge your wholesale customers. Make sure your system accommodates multiple customer types.
- Personalize your website for each type of customer, presenting information appropriately about your items.
- Use a single database system with integrated inventory and order management and real-time inventory data.
- Keep your system flexible and configurable by appropriate management.
- Provide your customer service reps with the information they need to engage with all your customers.
- Make reordering easy.
- Make sure you keep enough inventory for consumers when offering the same items to your wholesale customers.
- Use reports to monitor your performance.
What are other capabilities needed for B2B companies serving multiple customer bases? What challenges have you met? What opportunities?
Have You Tried the New Stock Reserve Feature?
Our new stock reserve feature avoids backorder of multiple retail orders resulting from stock rundown by high volume customers.
This feature reserves a specified quantity of stock for particular customer types, making it unavailable to other customer types. It may be used for dimensioned and non-dimensioned items, orders placed on the web, and through Customer Service.
For example, a single wholesale or consignment customer could easily deplete stock levels, meaning multiple retail orders go on backorder. This new functionality allows a specified quantity of stock to always be reserved for retail customers. Any line items ordered by retail customers are allocated, but orders for other customer types without this setting can only allocate from stock levels above the reserve thresholds. This also supports reserving stock from consignment transfers.
InOrder Royalty Module Enhanced for Entertainment Industries
The InOrder Royalty Module Supports royalty payments for music, book, and video industries, and works online with Digital Delivery. The enhanced module provides the following features:
- Supports royalty contracts that pay authors based on shares, as well as percentages, enabling far more organized and more accurate royalty earnings calculations.
- Tracks the role of various authors, illustrators, and other contributors that are linked to a royalty contract
- Supports paying royalties based on mechanical rate
- Full support to pay royalties based on dollars, percentages, or sliding scales
- Clause groups, and power selection filters, for extremely complex royalty clause calculations
- Includes a full royalty payables accounting system to track advanced, minimum thresholds, payment schedules, and other royalty earnings
Hope Publishing Company, a family-owned Christian music publisher, which provides music resources to the church, uses the InOrder Royalty Module. “We love the InOrder Royalty Module. It was a huge improvement over our last system. It is simple to use, handles all our requirements, and our writers are thrilled with the reporting side,” says Scott Shorney of Hope Publishing company. Visit http://www.hopepublishing.com for more information.
This capability, along with the InOrder Digital Delivery module, makes the InOrder ERP system an attractive solution for businesses that sell music, videos, or other digital online files.
Track More Email Campaigns and Show Customer Service Reps More Detail
Tracking Email has always been a part of the InOrder Email Marketing Enhancement. Now it’s also part of Digital Delivery and Email Communications. In addition to Email Blasts, users of these Enhancements can also track activity resulting from sending Emails to customers for various order and promotional messages.
The functionality uses keycodes, tracking pixels, and URL references to record when a message is sent, the type of message sent, when the message is opened (open rates), and the number of visits to the web site resulting from the message (click-through rate) to measure conversions. This data can also be used to monitor when Email is not being opened, or when it results in a new recipient from a forwarded message. This is helpful for keeping mailing lists current, which is important for maintaining sender reputation. Used with InOrder’s capacity to enable shoppers to choose which Email they receive, this function can help increase the effectiveness of selected messages.
When a message has been sent, it is logged on the customer’s timeline, providing customer service reps more opportunity to enhance the service experience when a customer calls.
For more information about how this feature can help you measure your Email ROI, contact us at 888-667-7332 or sales@morsedata.com.
ProLiteracy Relies on InOrder
Steph Hughes, one of Morse Data’s Implementation Specialists, recently had the pleasure of visiting ProLiteracy to assist with InOrder upgrades and training.
ProLiteracy was the first client to go live with InOrder in 1998. They rely on InOrder for memberships, inventory control, customer service, and web orders. The addition of InOrder’s Digital Delivery module will enable them to provide additional items via digital distribution.
ProLiteracy, located in Syracuse, New York, is helping to improve the world by providing programs that enable adults to learn how to read, write, do basic math, and use computers. Attributing crime, unemployment, and poverty to low literacy, ProLiteracy believes that adults can empower themselves to transform their lives by learning to read and write.
And they back up this belief with services to make this a reality. These include support and training for teaching adult learners, linking adults to literacy programs, providing an advocacy network for adult education programs, and conferences to address important issues facing adult literacy programs.
ProLiteracy also created the Ruth J. Colvin Center for Innovation and Excellence in Adult Literacy, which provides adult literacy resources to their community, as well as the National Book Fund (NBF) to provide books for students who can’t afford them. Additionally, ProLiteracy’s publishing division, New Readers Press (which also relies on InOrder for their weekly subscription fulfillment) provides instructional tools to teach essential skills to adults and older teens.
You can read more about ProLiteracy’s fight for a more literate society, including membership and donation opportunities, on their website.
New Report for Web Customer Feedback Program
If you are using the Web Customer Feedback Program Module, you’ll be interested in the new report to see your statistics for a date range. The links in blue in the report allow one or more levels of drill-down that can be used to view and analyze your customer feedback. 
InOrder’s Web Cart Delivers Fast and Accurate Search Results with Solr Search and Facet Filtering
We’ve done it again. Just when you think it doesn’t get much better – we make it better. Our Web Cart, that is. Now InOrder Web Cart users can give their customers top-of-the-line search capabilities with Solr Search and Facet Filtering.
Solr is a search platform from the Apache LuceneTM project. Its many advanced search capabilities include distinguishing between plural and singular search, recognizing common typos and finding results. And it can be used with Facet Filtering.
Facet Filtering is a powerful capability that helps customers fine tune their search results. It enables shoppers to make additional selections within search results based on their individual interests, eliminating the need to sift through many search results. Setup is minimal, and shoppers expect it.
These features provide shoppers with faster and more accurate search results, adding to our commitment to help our customers improve the shopping experience they deliver, while lowering costs and increasing sales.
New Custom Shopping Cart Upgrade Service
We are excited to be offering a custom shopping cart upgrade service to our clients who have InOrder eCommerce full .Net Module Software Support, along with a recent version of the InOrder real-time eCommerce Web shopping cart that has been customized.
This new service includes the following and is tailored to each client’s specific needs:
- Registration of custom web cart changes when submitted to Morse Data Corporation
- Periodic upgrades to the customized InOrder web cart with the latest InOrder updates provided by Morse Data web cart experts who know the InOrder software and ensure nothing has been missed
This benefit allows in-house staff, third party developers, or Morse Data developers to continue making changes to customized shopping cart content with personalized look and feel. At the same time, web customers receive new InOrder eCommerce capabilities as they become available with the InOrder platform upgrades.
Pricing is based a website’s level of customization and options selected. Clients who are interested are encouraged to contact Morse Data Corporation’s Technical Office for details at 1-800-860-9515 and request a free cart analysis to determine pricing. If sign up occurs before October 31, 2013, the one-time startup fee will be reduced by 50%.
InOrder’s RF Communication System Supports any Internet-Capable Device
The InOrder RF communication system efficiently handles inventory through real-time inventory tasks, improving productivity and control for major warehouse functions. And we’ve just made it more impressive.
If you are at a client’s office and he or she needs to know how much stock you have on hand of a particular item, how long will it take you to 1) call your office, 2) wait to be connected to the person who can look up the information (assuming that person is available when you call), and 3) wait for the information? Wouldn’t it be much more professional (and impressive) if you could simply check quantity and reserve inventory from your phone or tablet?
You can with InOrder’s RF Module. The InOrder RF communication system provides productivity and control for major warehouse functions using any internet-capable device, including your mobile phone or tablet.
InOrder recognizes barcode scanning or keypad entry, using a touch screen, shortcut keys, and any combination of these methods to communicate with your RF devices.
The advantage of using InOrder RF gives you more choices in hardware, flexibility, and freedom to keep up with the latest technology. You can leave the boundaries of the warehouse without compromising the efficiency of the traditional RF process.