We live in an era where eCommerce businesses are sprouting and developing at a rapid rate, and the competition is getting tougher every day. It’s becoming harder to keep up with the industry trends and stay at the top of your game at all times. You and your employees have limited amounts of energy and time and can only do so much on your own. Thankfully, there’s something else that can help you keep your eCommerce business afloat and make it thrive — workflow automation services.
Stay with us to learn what workflow automation in eCommerce is, how it works, and why it is important for your business.
What Is Workflow Automation in eCommerce?
To help you understand workflow automation in the context of eCommerce, we’ll split this phrase into two parts — workflow and automation — and explain each term separately.
Workflow represents a series of processes and activities that make up a business task. Usually, business tasks involve various manual tasks that humans perform over a period of time. As a result, the business is heavily dependent on those individuals, their capabilities, and their performance.
Workflow automation moves the responsibility of handling business tasks and processes from humans to technology. It allows a business to streamline its operations by placing software programs and applications in charge of them regularly. In that sense, multiple tasks can be done simultaneously at a faster rate.
If you run an eCommerce business, you are aware that it involves numerous repetitive processes that can be extremely time-consuming and tedious – especially when you are scaling. With workflow automation, you can get them done digitally. For instance, eCommerce automation can help streamline order management or customer enquiry workflows.
How Does Workflow Automation Work?
Workflow automation entails several stages. Firstly, one must determine the job that needs to be done and its tasks. Then, they have to define the rules and logic behind the tasks and how they’re typically performed. Finally, they need to create a system that will be able to do the necessary tasks following the pre-established rules and logic.
This sounds like a complex job that needs to be handled by a tech-savvy coder, right? Wrong, that’s not always the case now! If you run an eCommerce business, you can make use of some excellent no-code iPaaS (Integration Platforms as a Service, a bit like SaaS!) tools like Zapier, Make.com, Alloy, and you’ll be able to design and build workflows that execute the required tasks – all with no coding expertise.
There are of course levels of complexity to the different kinds of automation you may need, some of which you can definitely handle on your own. But some where it could make more sense to have an automation expert assist in at least building your first version of an automation.
What Would Automation in Workflow eCommerce Look Like?
A significant chunk of business tasks in eCommerce has to do with the fulfillment of orders.
As a result, your eCommerce automations would manage processes related to:
- Receiving orders — The system would automatically receive order details from all of your sales channels, structure the data payload, enter them into a centralised database, and send notifications to customers.
- Processing orders — This technology would also be in charge of checking stock availability, determining product location, and cross-referencing them. It could then route the order to the desired fulfilment solution.
- Shipping orders — The system would use the order details to print the shipping labels and send dispatched notifications and monitoring information to the customer automatically.
However, as you may know, this is only a fraction of the workflow eCommerce involves.
Workflow automation can also help you handle other tasks in running your eCommerce business, such as:
- Inventory management
- Procurement and purchasing processes
- Wholesale sales and operations
- Accounting processes like journal entries and invoice creation
- Vendor management
- List and catalogs creation
- CRM updates
- Complaints, returns, and refunds
Why Is Workflow Automation Important for eCommerce?
Your eCommerce business can benefit from workflow automation in many ways.
It can help you:
- Structure and organize business processes more effectively
- Relieve employees’ workloads
- Allow employees to focus on other high-priority tasks
- Improve efficiency
- Enhance productivity
- Reduce costs
- Boost revenue
- Improve procedure continuity
- Prevent miscommunication
- Minimize the number of errors
- Establish a better relationship with customers
Conclusion
Workflow automation can do wonders for your eCommerce business. Technology is able to handle mundane and repetitive tasks, saving you time, energy, and money along the way. In addition, your business processes will run more smoothly, resulting in more revenue and generating better relationships with both suppliers and customers. If you want your business to enjoy these benefits but you don’t have the time to do it yourself, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our workflow automation services can help your business grow and scale hassle-free.