Drive ecommerce Revenue and Cut Costs with Process Automation
By David Rastatter, Sr. Director, Product Marketing
Ecommerce has grown exponentially over the last few years. Experts predict this year’s ecommerce sales will exceed $5 trillion globally, with retail becoming a fifth of the overall sales.
Ecommerce companies must evolve their technology to keep up with growth, industry trends, and ever-changing consumer behavior and demands. However, many ecommerce businesses still rely on manual processes and disjointed systems and applications to engage with customers, and to sell and deliver their products. Many of these manual processes include processing orders, updating inventory counts, and shipping out products. Unfortunately, the end result is slower deliveries, error-prone order fulfillment, and less reliable service.
In order to meet consumer demands and keep up with the competition, retailers must leverage the best ecommerce integration solutions to automate their processes and create better customer experiences.
What is ecommerce Process Automation?
Put simply, process automation uses digital technology to automatically perform and complete tasks that are traditionally done manually. Common retail examples include processing orders, updating customer records in ERP systems, printing shipping labels, and automating purchase acknowledgements.
Some retailers try to scale their business by hiring more staff rather than relying on API solutions for ecommerce due to cost. However, it is nearly impossible to scale this way because the overhead costs will outweigh the benefits. This is why leveraging automation is key, as you can grow your business without taking on unnecessary personnel costs; plus, you can give your team more time to help customers with urgent matters that can’t be automated. After all, today’s consumers expect a fast, reliable, and frictionless online purchase experience.
If retailers continue to rely on manual processes rather than process automation, they’re putting their entire business at risk: 67% of consumers say they won’t shop with a brand again after one poor delivery experience.
Here are the three ways process automation will drive ecommerce revenue while cutting costs:
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Increases Productivity
Process automation significantly reduces manual data entry and the time employees spend validating information between multiple systems. This enables retailers to shift their employees from repetitive manual tasks to helping customers and improving their product.
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Drives Greater Efficiency
Process automation streamlines processes, such as quote-to-cash, order-to-fulfillment, and supply chain management. As a result, retailers are able to process things faster, like shipping and product updates, which helps to keep the customer journey seamless – and customers will come back for more.
Inherent to API solutions for ecommerce, process automation eliminates work silos by providing all teams with access to the same time-sensitive data.
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Reduces Data Errors
Leveraging process automation means that data is bi-directionally exchanged between multiple systems, platforms, and marketplaces such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Amazon, and BigCommerce. This eliminates errors and creates a single source of truth for data, eradicating data silos, manual prone errors, and inaccurate information.
Process automation is the key to unlocking ecommerce retailers’ ability to exceed customer expectations, stay competitive, and grow revenue while cutting long-term costs.
If you want to know more about how process automation drives ecommerce revenue, listen to our recent podcast or visit our ecommerce webpage.
