How Cin7’s order management system streamlines your operation and cuts costs with order consolidation

Ecommerce has taken off because customers can buy goods from the comfort of their homes and have them delivered straight to their front doors. For the ecommerce company, arranging this – filling orders at their warehouses, packing goods up, and shipping them out – is a complex operation, especially when you consider the vast number of orders that have to be taken care of at the same time. The logistics of such an operation have to be streamlined and as efficient as possible. That’s order management.

But orchestrating operations isn’t the only thing ecommerce businesses have to consider. Making the system cost efficient is also important. One way to improve efficiency is by implementing order consolidation. Order consolidation is the combination of different orders from the same customer into a single package. By combining orders, shipping costs are slashed and packaging is cut to a minimum. 

Order consolidation has another great benefit for the eseller: customers love it. That’s not just because they have one package to track and worry about; it’s because it’s how companies are able to offer them free shipping.

The free shipping option is huge. A January 2022 survey by Digital Commerce 360 found that 76% of respondents ranked free shipping as the factor that would make them most likely to place an order on a retail website, and it was the number-one reason for them to shop on a particular site, outranking “the right price.” 

In this blog we’re going to take a look at Cin7 Orderhive’s order management system (OMS) and explore (a) how its automation helps your fulfillment run smoothly at full speed without error, and (b) how its features can be adapted for order consolidation and save you money.

An order management system is the backbone of ecommerce fulfillment because it monitors everything about the process, including orders, sales, inventory levels, and shipments. In other words, from the moment an order is received from a customer until the instant it’s sent out, an order management system is tracking it, using the data stored in its system about the inventory in stock to ensure that the order – every order – is filled properly in the shortest amount of time. While useful for a whole host of companies, an order management system is really good software for sales entities to have, especially those that have several storage facilities and distribution centers and receive their orders from different online sites and outlets. 

It’s this wide oversight an order management system has that facilitates order consolidation. Just think about it: the automated system breaks down an order, knows where each item for it is stored, and directs picking, packing, and shipping. With this in mind, it isn’t much of a leap to identify different orders from the same customer and combine them. And it isn’t much of a leap to see how OMS can do this even when the items for those orders are stored in different facilities.

Cin7 Orderhive’s order management system has top-notch features that make it stand out from other, similar software — features that can be used to improve your customers’ experience. Providing a good customer experience is, of course, what you’re all about. Good customer experience brings repeat business, recommendations, and the big prize: business growth. 

Essentially, Cin7 Orderhive’s order management system has a dashboard that centralizes all your order management operations. It’s a mission control that gives you oversight of your fulfillment while allowing you to control it.  Being able to see everything in one place gives your whole operation transparency and makes it a lot simpler to manage. 

With the dashboard you can:

1. Centralize your order management.

• Consolidate all your sales channels – ecommerce stores and marketplaces, apps, social media, and brick and mortar.
  Know the status of every order at any time in real time.
• Integrate seamlessly with Cin7 Orderhive’s inventory control software, so your orders are totally synced with your inventory, in real time.
• Choose from any one of Orderhive’s 300+ shipping couriers.
• Have a window into your order fulfillment if you contract out to third-party logistics (3PL), Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), or a dropshipper.
• Accept all sorts of orders –  Orderhive supports pre-orders, backorders, and partial-order fulfillment.

2. Customize what data you see.

• Choose between a list or Kanban view – Kanban is a visualization of information, a pictorial format that uses cards and images. 
• Bring up all your orders or your choice of category: order number, reference number, invoice, customer name, or shipping service.
• Add, edit or delete fields – there’s an ‘Orders section’ for this.
• Create custom tags that can be used to identify items quickly and easily.
• Create your own graphic design for your invoices – or use a standard template that’s included.

3. Simplify your admin.

• Confirm or cancel orders in bulk instead of processing each one singly.
• Store details for regular customers who put in repeat orders, like their address, contact info, items they order regularly, preferred shipping method, and delivery instructions. 
• Export and import orders in bulk.
• Create manifests for shipping and shipping labels.
• Identify and prioritize orders by adding due dates and tags to them.
• Create Purchase Orders (POs) for out-of-stock items quickly; the software has a template for this.
• Reuse POs for repeat orders.
• Add comments or specific instructions directly to an order.
• Create, download, and print invoices instantly.

4. Have an overview that coordinates and improves your operation.

• Easily keep in contact with your suppliers, shipping providers, dropshippers, and customers, making sure everyone is on the same page. 
• Pull up every aspect of your business with a single tap on the dashboard.
• Monitor and track your orders and know their status in real time.
• Accept or make payments in a wide selection of currencies.
• Know your customer’s order history and use it to suggest other products.

5. Make order consolidation happen.

• Take multiple orders from the same customer and print out the combined items in a single picklist.
• Move items from one warehouse to another so packing and shipping happens at the same location.
• Keep some orders on hold to ensure they all go in the same package and are delivered at the same time.

Good reasons to consolidate orders:

• It makes free shipping possible.
• Less packaging is needed.

• It’s easier to deliver one package than several.

• It’s easier for the customer to track their orders.

Cin7 Orderhive’s order management system can keep your fulfillment humming, ensuring the best work flows and processing your orders faster than ever. Plus, as we’ve shown, it can save you money by consolidating orders, savings that you can pass on to customers as the “free shipping” option.

For more information, get in touch with a Cin7 Orderhive expert today.