E-Commerce Automation: 5 Growth Points

We at Ecomfly are often asked to help automate business processes within the company. Based on the tasks discussed with the owners and heads of the departments, we managed to compile a list of key automation points that will allow the business to earn more, improve labor productivity and increase the level of service.

E-Commerce Automation

E-commerce automation is the key to making your business work for you, not the other way around. Competition is constantly growing, finding ways to maintain positions is a necessary task that every manager faces. Digitalization will help maintain and even improve the indicators.

What business processes can be automated

E-commerce is becoming increasingly popular among entrepreneurs, and many companies are looking to optimize their business processes to remain competitive in the market. One way to achieve this goal is automation. In this section of the article, we will talk about which business processes can be automated in the field of e-commerce, what technologies are used for this and what advantages automation provides.

It is worth noting that everything can be automated in E-commerce! Let’s figure out what work in each department should be digitized first.

Warehouse

Let’s start with the warehouse operation, the timely processing and dispatch of orders depends on it.

What processes should be automated immediately?

Maintaining records of balances, generating order sheets, statistics on shipments, returns and sales.
Organize cellular or address storage of orders. Such organization will allow you to quickly find products.

What else can be automated? For example, implement an order packaging system or digitalize inventory using machine vision and mandrel.

Procurement

Your business is not built on selling products that are at the peak of trends, or you sell a constant range of goods, perhaps you are a manufacturer. How to unload the purchasing department and create a stable delivery schedule?

Automate the purchasing process in order to eliminate the stage of understanding the need to replenish inventory from the work of employees.

Automation Paths

For the manufacturer: develop a software product that will automatically track the balance of finished products in the warehouse, as well as the balance of raw materials needed for production. Such a solution will allow timely notification of workers about the reduction of balances and will reduce the likelihood of equipment downtime.

Automation of the supplier management process is relevant when it is necessary to regularly monitor balances and prices. This will be helped by standardization of price list uploads into the system and developed analytics within the software, which will show favorable price offers, highlight availability and other criteria influencing decision-making.

Sales analytics. An important tool that can be integrated with warehouse accounting. This will allow you to predict the decrease in warehouse balances, evaluate the popularity of manufactured or purchased goods, etc.

Marketing

The advertising and e-commerce departments are growing uncontrollably. The reason is the entry into sites that were not previously used as a channel for selling products and the capture of new markets. How to stop this uncontrolled growth? With the help of digitalization of business processes.

Catalog management. Automation of work with content will reduce the costs of hiring content managers to fill and support all marketing channels, from the website and marketplaces to social networks. This can be done by implementing a PIM system in the organization.

Communication with customers. By implementing a service for processing customer messages from a single window, you can speed up the employee’s response to the request, increase loyalty, and with them, profit.

Orders and shipment. These processes are implemented in every Ecommerce project. They are rarely interconnected into a single system. More often, orders are placed through a shopping cart, with information about the order being transferred to the CRM system of the sales department. How else can you increase customer loyalty?

Link warehouse balances to the website. This will allow you to see up-to-date information on availability at the time of placing an order.

If you have more than one warehouse and the order picking is performed at the warehouse closest to the customer or according to some other principle, showing the availability of balances only for this warehouse will be a profitable solution. In addition to updating information, manufacturing and wholesale companies need a catalog for processing orders taking into account warehouse stocks and in the required quantity: individually, by the box, by the pallet, etc. Automation of the described processes will free up managers’ time to search for new partners. The B2B portal will help solve this problem, and not only it.

Analytics

Implementation of a unified system that aggregates information from advertising channels in one place and provides reporting on each of them. This will reduce the time spent on generating daily reports and will allow faster decision-making on finalizing, updating and suspending an advertising campaign.

In-depth analytics on all processes will allow you to make informed and quick decisions on any issue. Such functionality can be provided by an ecosystem for analytics that combines data in one place.

Sales

Orders are received and processed by employees of this department. The company’s income depends on the efficiency of each manager. What processes should be automated to increase income and reduce the number of errors and get rid of routine?

Integrating a website with a CRM system. The first task that is implemented in every store. Uploading orders to a CRM will speed up order processing and also free managers from duplicating information from the administrative part of the website to the customer relationship management system.

Automation of order transfer. The next site after the integration of the main systems. After the order is confirmed, the sales manager needs to transfer the order information to the accounting program. You can eliminate double work and the possibility of error by setting up an automatic system for transferring applications to the accounting department and warehouse.

The described e-commerce automation tools are the starting point for an e-commerce project on the path to digitalization of business processes. The implementation of each of them will reduce costs, reduce the burden on employees and management, increase the efficiency of marketing and budget control for promotion, development and scaling, and most importantly, increase the loyalty of your customers.