InOrder ERP and IRCE 2017
We’re back from IRCE 2017 and as always, we’re excited about all the activities we saw and great people we met!
Many workshops at IRCE 2017 focused on B2B topics. One workshop (Amazon & Me) provided details from experts about listing products and managing product content, whether to sell as a third party or first party, fulfillment, marketing on Amazon, analyzing data, and negotiating with Amazon. Another workshop topic was about using eCommerce for B2B opportunities, the future of B2B eCommerce, ideas for successful B2B eCommerce strategies, finding new customers, personalization, mobile B2B eCommerce, challenges, and even a critique of B2B websites.
If you’ve been to IRCE 2017 or if you use InOrder, this might sound familiar. InOrder ERP has always supported B2B. Using InOrder, you can build rules and behaviors based on B2B vs. retail in terms of marketing, merchandising, pricing, picking / packing / shipping, customer service, and even contact management for follow-up efforts.
For example, InOrder’s eCommerce module has a built in B2B web site for wholesale orders that can be accessed by your B2B customers. In addition, established business customers can immediately see and search inventory with pricing agreements reflected, and can use their lines of credit when making on-line purchases. Their shipping arrangements are even automatically applied to web orders. InOrder’s EDI with Customers feature can also be tied in for acknowledgements of web orders, carton license plates, and advance shipping notices.
B2B customers want the same conveniences as retail customers do. They might not respond to “Call for Pricing” messages on your web site; however, they may be more likely to order when the pricing information is readily available. And they want other conveniences, like quick search results, pictures, and descriptions. They want easy reordering and if products are backordered, they need to know when to expect them. And once they log in to an established web account, they want personalized services, like the ability to see their negotiated prices and discounts applied as they shop on-line, with a presentation relevant to them.
If you are a B2B company considering an eCommerce store, contact us to request a demo showing how InOrder can help you attract new business.
4 Measures to Combat eCommerce Fraud and Theft
Mobile fraud is on the rise, and, as is the case with your eCommerce shopping website, your mobile eCommerce site requires vigilance to protect your customers’ sensitive data – especially when processing orders. Be sure you have measures in place to reduce mobile fraud, and train your employees to recognize signs of fraud. Your ERP system can also be a valuable weapon against would-be thieves and costly credit card chargebacks from fraud attempts.
Be sure you have these prevention measures in place to combat mobile fraud.
Fraud Scoring
To decrease fraudulent orders from being processed, use your ERP system to assess orders as they are received based on a variety of criteria known to indicate fraudulent purchases. This may include whether or not an item is considered risky, or even an area where orders are shipped. Simply knowing where fraud occurs can help protect your customers, so using address validation services is also helpful.
Integrated Solutions
Nobody wants to think that trusted partners are stealing from them – whether they’re shoppers, employees, or even vendors. But fraud and theft doesn’t only come from outside sources. Check your ERP system’s audit logging for dates, user names, and tasks each user performs. This enables you to isolate and trace other types of theft, such as generation of bogus customer refunds, gift cards, or credit memos.
Your ERP system’s Purchasing, Payables, and Inventory systems are all connected, so you can compare what was ordered – to what was received – to what you are paying your vendors.
The best eCommerce systems use responsive design for mobile web using Google’s recommended responsive design pattern. With this design, a single cart functions for both PC and mobile, with a similar look and feel, regardless of device size, no longer requiring multiple web sites. What this means for fraud protection is that you don’t have to worry about carrying out the same protection measures on separate systems.
Training
Your employees play a significant part in protecting your business against fraud and theft. However, if they don’t know what to watch for, what to protect, or how, then how can they help you? One way is to follow your procedures. Define a security policy, tell your employees about it, and train them on it.
Stronger Security Measures
If you’re thinking about accepting credit card payments, you must make sure your system meets specific security standards to protect sensitive data. The PCI Security Standards website is a good place to start for information. If you currently accept credit card payments, you already know that your ERP system is PA-DSS-Validated to meet your PCI-DSS requirements.
When you protect against fraud and theft, your employees, vendors, and customers discover that they can trust you. With their trust comes respect and confidence that your business will continue to grow. Use these measures to improve and protect your customers’ shopping experience, achieve their trust, and prove that you take them seriously.
Contact us for a free demo of how InOrder’s eCommerce system helps combat eCommerce fraud and theft.
Does Your ERP System Allow Flexible Ordering to Prevent Frustration, Make Customers Happy, and Save You Money?
When customers shop your web store, they probably expect the same flexibility they experience in a physical store. Policies such as returns, exchanges, credits, coupons, and even questions or changes during checkout may be common at a physical register, but can your customers get that same great service online? With a good ERP system, all of these features are available and within your control.
Consider Mary, who shops online, enters her payment information, and submits her order. Then she remembers one small, inexpensive item she forgot to order. She quickly tries to add the forgotten item to her order, but she can’t find a way to do it herself. Mary looks for a Customer Service number – hopefully, if she acts quickly enough, she can add the item without a duplicate shipping charge. When she calls, the Customer Service rep is able to help her, but only by creating a new order and waiving the shipping charges. Mary is thankful for the help, but the Customer Service rep was apologizing for the inability to accommodate a seemingly simple request. And the business took a hit on the shipping charge (which was more than the cost of the item).
Waiving a shipping charge is a small price to make a customer happy, but it isn’t necessary. This signifies a problem with the system, which can quickly become a significant expense.
With InOrder, you can choose to allow orders to be edited even after packing.
Having the right ERP system can prevent frustration for both customers and Customer Service reps, and saves you money. Whether you allow changes for shipping information, billing information, or line items for orders should be up to you – not your software.
Call us for a free demo to see more of how InOrder can help your business grow.
7 Tips to Keep Your eCommerce Customers Engaged
Keeping eCommerce customers engaged is as important as getting new customers. After all, you work hard to select quality products, advertise your business, and attract people to your website. So it makes sense to do your best to give them good reason to keep coming back. Here are some helpful tips:
- Give customers ideas for using your products. If you have a product that solves a problem, tell them.
- Provide instructions and videos showing how to use your products.
- Keep customers engaged with Ratings, Reviews, Comments, and Q&A. Reply to feedback, add comments to a thread, encourage questions, and offer suggestions.
- Offer rewards and coupons for participating.
- Embrace Your Comparison Shoppers. People research products. As shoppers, we check out all our options. We gather information about what’s available, we read reviews, and then we decide where to shop. Motivate shoppers to use your website for researching your products and make it easy for them to buy from you by providing what they need.
- Show your latest features and new products.
- Create excitement with a VIP Program. Use multiple levels so people can attain them, rather than simply joining and being a member.
Along with these activities, always provide exceptional customer service and quality products. Most shoppers prefer that over delivery speed and lack of attention. Spend time getting to know your customers and their ordering preferences.
Many shoppers appreciate information and online activities that involve what interests them. Keep them interested with education, participation, and fun. Use your own website for a gathering place, or find out where your customers go for online social activities, such as Facebook or Instagram. Use these tips to help them stay interested in what you have to offer.
Contact us for a free demo of how InOrder can help you keep your eCommerce customers engaged.
Beware of the Latest Coupon Scam
Most shoppers love coupons. Before shopping, many people may first search online for coupons from their favorite stores. And with many websites providing links to coupons, it can be much easier to find them. Unfortunately, it’s also easier for thieves to scam unsuspecting shoppers.
A recent trend for thieves is to post coupons on Facebook. These coupons, usually too good to resist, lure shoppers to click on them and provide personal information, which is then used by thieves to steal identities, money, and anything else they can get away with. To add insult to injury, the coupon isn’t even legitimate.
While it is imperative to have a security process and train your employees to protect your business, it is also important to try to educate your customers about keeping their information safe. This can go a long way in helping to avoid breeches – both for customers and your business. Here are some tips:
- Let customers know your coupon policy and where to find them.
- Don’t require personal information in exchange for a coupon. Doing so may confuse your customers and prevent them from recognizing a scam that requires personal information.
- Remind your customers to NEVER provide personal information in exchange for your coupon.
- Make it easy to find your contact information for questions. Display your phone number where it can be easily and quickly seen. If a shopper has a question or problem navigating your site, make sure you can help.
Coupons, promotions codes, sales, and special offers are proven ways to significantly influence purchases. Consumers will even use them to plan what they buy, where they will buy it, and when. Do what you can to promote this activity, and don’t let thieves spoil it for you.
Contact us for a free demo for offering coupons with InOrder.
Get Your Wholesale Shopping InOrder
InOrder provides support for wholesale ordering, including wholesale orders that require items to be ordered in multiples of the item quantity per carton.
Whenever a line item is added to an order, it is checked to determine if wholesale ordering is in effect. If it is, then the quantity ordered must be a multiple of item carton quantity. The item quantity is rounded up to the carton quantity, and a line item message indicates that the line item was rounded up. A popup alert may also be displayed.
Enforcement of wholesale order requirements may be changed at the line item level. When this setting is changed on the order and one or more line items already exist, line items that are already on the order are not affected. Therefore, this setting can be temporarily bypassed by turning it off, adding the line item, and turning it on again. This allows special overrides, when necessary, at the line item level.
This feature is also supported for Electronic Order Filling and EDI orders. On the web site, the Item Details page is also designed to show a message if there are wholesale ordering requirements for the item. You can customize this message with a simple configuration setting.
For more information about wholesale shopping with InOrder, please contact sales@morsedata.com and ask for your free demo.
Helpful Articles for Your Business
Thinking of closing physical stores? Think again. Phil Wahba discusses how physical stores are supporting online sales.
http://fortune.com/2017/03/30/e-commerce-brick-mortor-stores-retail-shopping/
When you’ve finished reading the first article, be sure to read this one about embracing your comparison shoppers to build confidence and trust, and interact with them.
https://www.getinorder.com/blog/index.php/does-your-erp-software-embrace-your-comparison-shoppers/
If you use SEO, social media, or other digital advertising, machine learning is important to you. This MultiChannel Merchant article discusses machine learning as it impacts eCommerce.
http://multichannelmerchant.com/ecommerce/machine-learning-will-impact-ecommerce-13032017/
Will the cyber world ever be without threats? Maybe not. So your employees should always be aware of who and what is lurking out there, and how to protect your business interests. Check out another poster from Halock to remind them of a few simple rules.
InOrder at ProMat 2017
We hope you had a chance to visit ProMat 2017 for manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain professionals. This is a great opportunity for us to discuss how InOrder helps grow your business and supports the unique needs and brands of each of your clients – no matter how many you have.
Thanks to InOrder, your clients get better service while you get lower overhead and increased efficiency from a complete, stable, off-the-shelf, highly modular software system that lets your enterprise grow without fear, worry or limitation.
At the show, we had a chance to check out tools that integrate with InOrder.
Here, John Hutchens from dataltd.com demonstrates ultra-rugged Windows 10 warehouse devices that run on forklift batteries, for mobile InOrder Packing Verification and similar applications.
And here, Jerrod and Tony discuss an InOrder – Packsize Integration Project. InOrder feeds shipment data to Packsize, which cartonizes shipments and then produces on demand pre-sized pre-labeled shipping boxes, thus minimizing dim weights.
The best part of the show was everyone we met. If we didn’t get a chance to talk to you, just ask for your free demo to see what InOrder can do for you.
Do You Need an ERP System?
An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system commonly integrates information across the organization. This system, which relies on a single database, automates the flow of information within the system.
Most systems are modular and allow you to add modules as you grow. Modules are usually tightly integrated; an update in one module often affects information in other modules. The modules all carry a consistent look and use the same layout.
In the past, ERP systems were for very large enterprises. In the last decade, systems have been designed for smaller businesses.
What are the Benefits of an ERP System?
A well-designed ERP system usually incorporates many aspects of a business – from CRM, order management and the supply chain to sales, accounting and marketing. It integrates all of your separate, divided systems and processes into one unified system.
A typical ERP system can manage your inventory and warehouse functions, process orders and payments, drive business growth with promotions and other marketing efforts, and protect customer data. It can even manage commissions, royalties, and contracts, help with job costing, and so much more.
An ERP system can give you a more clear view of your business. It can eliminate old and outdated systems, as well as manual and paper processes, while providing more efficient operations across your enterprise.
What Next?
First, make a list of your business processes and what you’d like an ERP system to have. You’ll want a system that can easily create reports and provide access to current documentation. Do you need inventory or warehouse management? Do you want your Customer Service Reps to help grow your business? Do you want a real-time shopping cart? Decide what you need, and what you want to accomplish.
Then, request a free demo to see if InOrder is right for you.
Offer Coupons to Your Customers with InOrder
Coupons, promotions codes, sales, and special offers are proven ways to significantly influence purchases. Consumers will even use them to plan what they buy, where they will buy it, and when.
With InOrder ERP, you can add special offers to your InOrder Marketing Promotions. Define general perpetual use and once-per-customer coupon codes that can be used with your promotion for a fixed amount off, a free item, or promotional shipping.
Use InOrder’s Coupons and Offers Processing with the InOrder Marketing Module for the following functionality:
- Link no charge or discounted line items to promotions.
- Offer continuity series for customer sign-up.
- Add Buy-One-Get-One items to the order whenever another specific item is added to the order. This feature can also be used for Buy-One-Get-Two, Buy-X-Get-X, or even Buy-X-Get-1 offers.
- Add line items to an order when any item from a category or list of inventory items has been ordered.
- Offer promotional shipping charges, such as free or fixed price shipping. These offers may be tied to requirements such as ordering specific items or items from a product group.
- Use coupon items as triggers for the above offers.
- Add fixed price discount coupons to orders.
- Set up offers as single use per customer, single use per order, Buy-One-Get-One, or Buy-X-Get-X.
Contact us to schedule a free demo to see InOrder’s Coupons and Offers Processing in action.