The Benefits of eCommerce and Back-Office Integration
The Benefits of eCommerce and Back-Office Integration
It 's astonishing how many companies are still working with separate systems for the front and back offices. Front-office features refer to the design, content, images and features that customers routinely see on a company 's website and Web pages while back-office processes include ERP and CRM software, inventory management, fulfillment processes, accounting and staff management. Back-office integration--along with front-office integration and automation--delivers improved management efficiencies and better customer experiences by giving each website visitor expanded options for researching products, ordering products and services,
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Maintaining minimum inventory counts with automated reordering or staff alerts
Managing partial shipments if customers want them
Generating invoices, marking them paid and emailing them to clients
Adding sales taxes, customs and duties and other surcharges
Applying the correct pricing tier for each customer and honoring custom price quotes
Handling multiple payment options and in-house account billing
Automating recurring orders and integrating these requirements in maintaining inventory
Decreasing administrative costs by increasing the speed of order fulfillment, reducing the need for staff involvement and and ensuring that information only needs to be entered once
Bringing together data from multiple sources to speed custom price quotes and manage custom product configurations
Calculating, printing and mailing statements automatically each month
Empowering customers to change, amend, cancel and return their orders
Integrating online and brick-and-mortar sales
Updating inventory counts from multiple distribution points such as retail sales, outside salespeople, trade shows, distributors and multiple warehouses
Breaking Down
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Many customers can manage their accounts without human intervention, and although many older people consider this appalling, younger generations feel empowered by the ability to manage their accounts 24/7. Even though direct engagement might only occur when there 's a problem, that doesn 't mean that company staff don’t communicate with customers. Emails, text messages, marketing incentives and two-way communications are enhanced by an automated platform. People still communicate in B2B sales; it 's just done differently and more efficiently instead of playing phone tag or leaving messages with harried staff
Leverage economies of scale to lower vendor prices, achieve distribution and transportation efficiencies. The larger diversity of products attracts customers who want to avoid the transport costs inherent in buying at several stores(Basker et al., 2008)-One stop shopping effect.
The customer support and customer service functions are more than departments; they are part of an essential strategy for growing your business. In the modern business climate, customers expect answers to their questions immediately. When the right information is available anytime, from anywhere in the world, customers are more likely to have a positive experience, thus customer loyalty will be increased. It is a known fact that the cost to obtain a customer is ten times higher than to maintain and keep existing customers. (Gouran, Dennis, W.E. Wiethoff, & J.A. Doelger. (1994). Mastering communication. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.) Not in Reference Pg.
“Consumers today is on the go, multitasking and reaching them is much more difficult than it used to be. Habits are changing high tech gadgets are a must and music and TV is dialed up on demand dictated by the consumers. Consumers are choosing how they want to interact with the environment on their turns. A trend that has created many challenges for companies that are seeking new customers. No longer do American Express has just a captive audience watching three networks or going to the mailbox as their only incoming source of information and correspondents. Consumers are choosing how they want to interface and interact. Marketers need to be where consumers want them. Consumers have various cards to choose from and repeat offers in the mailbox all over ruined with options and as a result, finding a good time to talk with marketers require more creativity. Today, there is too many messages, and American Express trying to figure out if anything getting through” (Kotler & Keller, n.d.).
The Home Depot Supply Chain Management model is based on integrated inventory management through a centralized network of 20 distribution centers, called Rapid Deployment Centers (RDCs) and three Direct Fulfillment Centers (DFCs) aimed at the e-commerce market (Bond, 2015). Orders are processed and managed to meet current and forecasted demands, sent to the regional RDCs, which service approximately 100 stores each, and sent to retail outlets to meet stock requirements (Bond, 2015). Direct Fulfillment Centers are e-commerce distribution systems. Home Depot delivers within a two-day timeframe to 90% of US based customers, and the system also leverages in store stock for same day pick-up (Bond,
This has increased efficiency and consistency as well as made it possible to apply some of the business strategies like just in time to solve the manufacturing process issues.
There are entirely too many issues with tiered customer service and many companies are abandoning them. Many companies are turning to a collaborative system. Agents are more knowledgeable and the severity of their issue is determined quickly and they are connected to the agent that can better assist them. The use of the social network has the ability to bring in product management teams quickly. All things considered, each and every customer is important
Reducing risk ; reducing the quantity of manufactured so that reducing burden of stock and burden of frequent discount sales
Another goal is to act like an automated sales force, tracking the customer’s account history for repeated sales then come up with suggestions. Lastly, the heavy use of technology will keep the customer up to date on things such as inventory and tracking information. Technology will also manage growth and demand, especially with seasonal products, like Christmas. By doing so, firms are able to get a transparent forecast of projected sales for certain items.
Sethi, S, Yan, H, & Zhang, H. (2005) Inventory And Supply Chain Management With Forecast Updates New York, NY : Springer.
Thus, customers can get and receive information from each other instead of communicating to the corporations or the companies and as result they can easily spread information about company products as well as information about new arrivals
As of now, our processes are not as efficient as they ought to be. Management is aware of this challenge and is making steps to change this to ensure high productivity and A-1 customer service. Some include making better use of technology by emailing statements and notices rather than sending them in through the post office which can take a while sometimes and is quite unreliable here in The Bahamas. There are also plans to adopt a new quote system that allows an employee to enter in a few details on the customer and have a quote generated in seconds.
...undswell consumer applications are very effective and are becoming a must have for companies to grow to maximum potential. The social applications generate more accurate research insights, extend the reach of marketing, boost sales efforts and lower support costs. The potential benefits of customer relationships that social applications can provide are too persuasive for companies to deny. Although the groundswell can have its share of risks, engaging with the groundswell is the best way to promote a "customercentric" philosophy within a company. It creates a more direct, two-way contact relationship between a company and the consumers. It also provides managers with direct evidence of how customers think and feel. With the balance of power shifting from company to customer, it is becoming contagious for companies to engage in groundswell consumer applications.
One of the main problems with large companies is they tend to lose touch with their customers and begin to see them as just "numbers on a page." What they fail to realize is there's no "accounting formula" to tell them just how important "happy customers" really are. The most utilized form of research on the internet is Quantitative Research. This involves collecting electronic information from an appropriate sample of clients to find out what their views are about the organization and the customer service that it offers. This paper will discuss the various marketing tools being utilized within the banking industry and level of customer service it provides.
Also, ConnectShip provides several products that enable customers to improve operational and management efficiencies related to shipping processes. These products are Toolkit, Warehouse, ChainLink, Merchant, and Advisor which are all provided by ConnectShip. Moreover, these products feature integrated business documents generation, carrier compliant data uploads, and International shipping with customs and export documents. In addition, the benefits of ConnectShip are increased efficiency by removing costly steps to bridge different systems together, reducing overall costs of systems management by fixing shipping functionality, and improving shipping management as a result of better accurate data.
...beneficial to study the customer perception of social media structures and observe the real impact of the system that carries on customer devotion and commitment. “Face-to-face contact is being used less often by salespeople to build and maintain client relationships” (Marshall, Moncrief, Rudd, & Lee, 2012, p. 353). Additional exploration is vital to offer useful instruction as well as creating theory on the subjects that may be presented during operation. Andzulis, Panagopoulos, and Rapp posit that social media will provide ample research in the future and that it will be able to mold not only future sales and marketing strategies but also corporate philosophies for the foreseeable future (Andzulis et al., 2012, p. 315).