The rapid growth in eCommerce sales has forced countless companies to scale their operations, expand their marketing initiatives, customer service strategies, and inventory management protocols. As a result, it’s become increasingly difficult to get ahead in today’s market while manually managing repetitive and time-consuming tasks that can be automated and easily improved.
As a store owner, it’s obvious that keeping things running as smooth as possible is in your best interest. As simple as it sounds, automation can make this happen. Confidently knowing you can pass off daily and time-consuming tasks to scale your business, improve your supply chain efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction gives you the peace of mind and confidence to never look back. The following guide will break down how automation works, and what tools are most effective in adapting to your specific needs.
What is eCommerce Automation?
In the simplest of terms, eCommerce automation focuses on optimizing or eliminating manual processes or tasks necessary to running an eCommerce store. This is often done through programmed workflows, automated software, and app integrations.
How does Automation enable growth?
One of the major advantages of automation is that it increases the speed with which you can effectively scale your business. Even though hiring a team of people to work on daily manual tasks may appear to be less overall work, testing and creating automated workflows that function on autopilot is often always worth the allocated time and effort in the long run.
For example, creating automatic customer service responses to frequently asked questions can significantly reduce the number of tickets your support team has to handle daily. The surplus of time can be allocated to different tasks like proactively engaging and interacting with customers to promote more sales and loyalty.
The ultimate goal of automated processes like this is to reduce the overall workload of individual teams and employees. This approach also strategically awards more time for business owners to focus on the most critical tasks at hand.
Why are leading eCommerce shops embracing automation?
It’s no secret that manual tasks are prone to human error, which can hurt your name and business. Even if it gives you the peace of mind that a physical group of employees are hard at work, automating marketing initiatives and logistical tasks should be a high priority.
Time savings
Part of a smart management strategy is putting your employees to work in the most effective way possible. This means deciding which tasks should be manually and automatically completed. With automation, tasks like order tagging and picking can offer significant time savings. In this digital age, there is no shortage of programs and software ripe for automation.
Cost savings
Automation provides considerable cost savings by helping your eCommerce business cut down on expensive labor costs. Since automated processes rarely require monitoring, you can maximize your team’s productivity when they are both on and off the clock. Not to mention the laborious process of finding the right individuals for the job. Since automation brings increased accuracy, you end up saving on both money and time by reducing the margin and potential for overall errors.
Increased accuracy
There’s nothing worse than delayed shipment or unboxing experience ruined by receiving an incorrectly shipped item. Automation works to increase order accuracy by eliminating errors that come from manual inputs and tasks. With order and picking automation, all your shipping information is updated using bots, making the process more transparent and rigorous. Long gone are the days spent worrying about mispacking and other mistakes that taint the customer’s experience and deter them from shopping with your store again.
Data collection & analytic capabilities
Syncing your online store with a transparent and easy-to-use warehouse management software and analytical programs helps you stay on top of the constant and daily flow of information in real-time. Trying to manually gather and generate data reports on your own time is extremely time-consuming and makes it increasingly difficult to discern overarching trends and insights. With automation, you can lose the data silos and start creating reports about key variables like cart abandonment and order fulfillment performance.
Compatible app integrations
When it comes to automation, app integrations are your best friend. In this day and age, software with automatic integrations like Klaviyo, Deposco, Mailchimp, Shipstation, and a host of Shopify apps are the key to building a successful online retail operation. Knowing where and how to best connect with your target audience comes with the ease of analytical tracking and proper app integrations to engage.
As the eCommerce landscape continues to grow, so will the number of automated eCommerce solutions. Prepare yourself today and learn more by partnering with a competent Fulfillment partner like Drive Fulfillment. With years of supply chain and logistical experience, innovative warehouse management software, and a skilled group of staff, the days of constantly worrying about satisfying customers are over. Get in touch for more information or to schedule a tour of our Utah-based Drive Fulfillment Centers today.
