Top features of Multichannel Management

As eCommerce businesses expand their operations from more than one digital channels, they find it difficult to streamline core functionalities manually. Accordingly, they start looking for an integrated system that can simplify these operations and help them achieve better results.

In this article we will decode some of the most available features and lesser known capabilities that businesses should be aware of when considering a multichannel eCommerce management software.

Modern day consumerism requires businesses to be present on all the channels their customers like to shop on. And today, with buyers frequently browsing through various online stores, marketplaces & other digital sales channels, operating on all these places is paramount for businesses. But, successfully managing these sales channels is not as simple as it may seem, and requires proper multichannel management.

Multichannel management is a process to systematically control & manage operations across all your sales channels.

And to do that, there are plenty of software systems available in the market. If you are looking to implement one to streamline and automate your eCommerce operations, here’s what you can expect.

Conventional blocks of Multichannel Management Software:

1) Unified Order Management:

Multichannel management software enables unified order management. You get complete visibility for all the orders received across multiple channels in a single place. This increases your processing speed, amplifies your operational accuracy, thus enabling you to handle large order volumes while ensuring maximum SLA compliance with the marketplaces.

2) Centralized Inventory Management:

Centralized inventory management helps you achieve 100% error-free inventory levels, get auto-updates in real-time, while allowing you to maintain sufficient inventory across channels at all times. This in turn easily simplifies your multichannel order management.

You can download accurate inventory reports and improve your stock turn significantly without having to worry about overselling or underselling to create stronger sales strategies with an in-depth view of your inventory.

3) Pre-built Integrations:

Pre-built integrations are important to support your sales, accounting, logistics and order fulfillment operations across multiple channels.

Separately managing operations of assigning last-mile carriers per order depending on marketplaces, or manually entering financial details into your accounting tools or otherwise managing your webstores can be time consuming.

On the other hand, all these integrations present in one system can help you streamline your operations, improve speed, business performance and efficiency.

4) Actionable Insights and Real-time Reports:

In order to capitalize on all the sales channel insights, some multichannel systems generate real-time sales reports. Since these reports are readily available and downloadable at your convenience, they help you understand different sales aspects of your business.

With these reports you can learn which channel is giving you the best results or during which period you get the maximum number of orders. With real-time key performance metrics and powerful insights of your sales, you get a bird’s-eye view of all your channels. This further helps you to align your business strategies according to the current trends and maximizes your growth accordingly.

Additional features to consider:

1) Product Information/Digital Asset Management:

Having identical product information across all channels is important to win over your customers’ trust. Product Information Management (PIM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems will make your multi channel listing management operations easier than ever. Having a PIM/DAM in place enables Content Syndication which is especially beneficial for brands operating via a tiered distribution model.

As you continue to add more sales channels, updating listings and product catalogs gets trickier; not to mention the volume of human resources that you would require for this only task. PIM and DAM helps you to get rid of this challenge and focus all your efforts in business sales rather than maintaining the level of expected quality for products, sales channels, and brand persona.

2) Filtered Order Insights:

To drive better sales across different marketplaces like Lazada, Shopee , ebay, or Amazon.

For example, you will want to understand which product is performing better and where. Hence, in addition to preliminary sales reports, some multichannel systems provide filtered insights for searches based on channel, product, country, order trends, and get an overview of your product sales.

With such a specific drill-down of your sales data you can therefore improve your business insights and take appropriate actions.

3) Unified Promotions Management:

Since sales and promotions have become a regular activity all through the year, you need to be prepared at all times. Keeping up with the current promotions plan, updating product catalogues, updating stock and inventory across channels, streamlining logistics and fulfillment processes in place - all these are highly crucial during this period. You can quickly lose track of your orders or which discount is offered through which channel.

Today’s multichannel systems have therefore been developed with specialized capabilities that help you monitor in-depth channel-wise campaigns and promotion performance. With separate modules, you can also mix things up during the annual promotions and generate maximum revenue across all the channels.

4) Business specific customizations

Apart from all these features, there are some multichannel eCommerce management systems that help you customize them with specific integrations or new capabilities added into the system for your benefit.

The best way is to focus your efforts on these unique business needs.

Considering there are some solutions that develop customized workflows and integrations, you can have an exclusive multichannel management software that aligns perfectly with your needs. Therefore, before arriving at any conclusion, be sure to have evaluated your choices accordingly.