Over the coming weeks, our partners will be detailing how their eCommerce extension can help you streamline your D2C process. This week Sara Sousa, Partner Product Marketing Manager at Brightpearl, provides insight into how Brightpearl can streamline your D2C process from the point of purchase to delivery.
With so many retail stores closing – both due to the pandemic and the eCommerce boom –the direct-to-consumer path is definitely looking more attractive than ever to merchants. However, selling D2C changes the way you buy, and sell, and forecast. It also changes how you run your warehouse, staff your business, take payments, use reports, and everything else in between.
So, there’s definitely some strategy that goes into making the shift to D2C. Of course, one of the biggest things to focus on is maintaining that frictionless shopping –experience, because consumers expect what they ordered, when they ordered it – and if you miss the mark on those expectations, it’s going to be tough to recover from it.
We know that 77% of negative reviews are directly related to issues that happen after shoppers hit the buy button, such as order fulfilment, shipping, and accounting, etc. and not the product itself. Too often, these are critical processes that occur after the point of purchase that get neglected by traditional and D2C ecommerce websites alike.
It’s those departments beyond the buy button that will face the most profoundly different requirements. Inventory management, demand planning, order management, and logistics, are prominent examples. One of the best ways to ensure these departments are up to the challenge is by exploring automation. Some of the best retail operations systems, like Brightpearl, automate workflows in all those areas.
First, let’s talk about syncing your inventory across all sales channels. Brightpearl’s inventory system logs and accounts for orders that come from everywhere you sell. By having these channels communicate with your operations system, you’ll have much more accurate records of stock which help you avoid things like overstocking and overselling, preparing for demand surges, and even being able to quickly liquidate any low performing stock.
Along these same lines is demand and inventory planning. Brands need to be able to make educated and intelligent predictions based on real data. Using the data housed in Brightpearl’s Demand Planner system allows you to understand demand and how that demand fluctuates, ensure you have the right stock on hand and also optimise cash flow to spend money on the products that you know are going to sell.
Additionally, you’ve also got automated order processing to think about. Processing orders is critical to your back-office operations – the faster and more efficiently you process orders, the faster customers get their goods, the happier they are and more likely to buy from you again. But you want your team to work smarter, not harder – so you want technology that automates those orders coming in, follows the normal fulfilment process for all the ordinary orders, but then separates the abnormal orders that need your attention for you to investigate further. And, most importantly, you want all of this to be done without having to hire a bunch more people, especially as your business handles any of your peak trading periods. Brightpearl’s order management capabilities allow you to achieve that level of automation across multiple channels – and also makes it easy to create those workflows quickly.
Brightpearl’s native integrations to major ecommerce platforms, such Adobe Commerce, makes for a seamless connection, improving data visibility and accuracy, enabling you to make the right decisions faster. Brightpearl’s Adobe Commerce extension centralises your CRM, orders, inventory, and accounts all in one place. Once orders are downloaded, stock is reserved immediately, triggering real-time inventory updates to all your sales channels so you minimise overselling, aiding in the ultimate customer experience that will turn one-time shoppers into loyal customers.
In summary, transitioning to a D2C approach is no trivial undertaking. If you take the plunge, you’ll need to respond to a new set of issues. However, with a system like Brightpearl managing and automating your retail operations on the backend, creating seamless connections to core pieces of your organisation, the move to D2C will be as streamlined as possible.
To learn more about how PushON – in partnership with Brightpearl – can streamline your sales process, contact a member of our team today!
