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For online retailers, accurate and efficient order fulfillment is largely contingent upon a solid integration between your Web Store (the customer facing website where consumers order) or marketplace selling channels AND your Warehouse Management systems (the back end warehouse system that manages inventory and orders). Whether fulfillment is performed in house or via an outsourced fulfillment provider, electronically sending over correct order information to the warehouse staff not only eliminates manual order entry error but also helps to streamline warehouse operations. Furthermore, the warehouse must be able to send the shipping tracking information for all orders back to the Web Store software so that customers can receive updates on their orders and track them to their doorsteps.
But with so many e-commerce shopping cart solutions and inventory management systems on the market today, how does an online retailer make sure that they’re using the most effective solutions to integrate these divergent systems? The answer may not be as clear cut as one would think.
Shopping cart software programs, such as Magento, Volusion, Shopify and others, are great for creating powerful websites that capture orders and collect payments from customers. Still other companies opt for using a content management system for their web site, such as WordPress, coupled with a shopping cart plug in to capture and process orders, which also offers a viable option. But what happens once the order is ready to be pulled and shipped? Oftentimes, newer and growing online merchants simply utilize the shopping cart software to print invoices and packing slips and manage the status of orders.
In the case of newer companies with more limited time and budgets, simply using the shopping cart as an order management system can be a short term solution. For example, one route is to utilize an inexpensive content management system, such as WordPress, coupled with a Web Store “plug-in” that adds additional functionality to the website. A great example of this in action is to use WordPress’s popular Foxy Cart along with a plug-in called Order Desk. Developed by SparkWeb Interactive, Order Desk is a centralized, web based platform that organizes orders received from WordPress Web Stores, allowing growing merchants a way to easily process and ship orders. Order Desk also integrates with some third party warehouses to address outsourced warehousing needs, as discussed below.
However, as the business becomes more complex, and as needs change and increase, many merchants graduate to the next level of business – and purchase an inventory management system. These systems help to better manage the flow of inventory from purchase to fulfillment, but they also add a layer of complexity to the overall fulfillment equation. In particular, data must be passed back and forth in order for the shopping cart to communicate with the inventory system – such as sending order information to the inventory system, sending shipping tracking information back to the shopping cart once the order has been processed, and generally managing inventory counts for seamless fulfillment of customer orders.
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