Conversion and Optimization Archives

The Definitive RFP Template for Order Management Systems Evaluation

Nobody wants to create a Request for Proposal (RFP) document from scratch. If you’re buying an Order Management System (OMS) for the first time, you need to get educated on the general market and offering, learn which feature categories are important, and figure out the areas to investigate that you would never have considered on your own. Well, that’s a challenge!

Many clients have asked us for OMS RFP templates in the past. So, we’ve taken a stab at it, and we think we’ve done a pretty good job too!

This comprehensive Order Management System RFP template covers all of the important OMS feature categories, including some that most people fail to consider. And it has some nifty capabilities of its own:

Overall Summary that automatically tabulates how well a vendor stacks up against the features you consider “must haves” and “nice to haves”
Merchant Summary and Vendor Summary pages that auto-populate other areas of the RFP.
Feature Prioritization and Filtering, so you can easily filter out the features that you don’t need vendors to answer.
Over 125 OMS Features across 9 categories:
- User Experience
- Distributed Order Management, Customer Service Capabilities & Loyalty Tools, Fulfillment Capabilities, Inventory & Warehouse Management, Product Information Management (PIM)
- Administration, Reporting & Analytics, and Performance, Security and Compliance,
- Integration Support

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We hope you find it helpful. A recent whitepaper of ours, 5 Hidden Costs to Avoid When Buying an Order Management System, complements your RFP Template well, identifying some of the potential show-stoppers you’ll want to avoid when procuring a new OMS.

Please drop us a line if you have questions, comments or suggestions.

Download Free RFP Template

Written By:

Jeremy Stewart

Jeremy Stewart leads customer success at Cahoot, helping merchants achieve high-performance logistics through smart technology and process optimization. With a background in both ecommerce operations and client services, Jeremy ensures that every merchant using Cahoot gets measurable results—whether they’re scaling from one warehouse to many or managing complex returns.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

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Building an Effective Digital Loyalty Program in the Amazon Age [Free Webinar]

Did you know that you can boost your revenues by 95% if you increase customer loyalty by 5%?

In fact, it is seven times more costly to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.
Companies like Amazon and Nordstrom know that investments in loyalty pay handsomely and have created outstanding rewards programs. These retailers have millions of subscribers and are market leaders in customer loyalty.

The importance of retail customer loyalty and retention is profound.

73% of ‘members’ will recommend brands with good loyalty programs
70% of consumers will spend more if they can be rewarded

Our webinar, featuring Robbie Kellman Baxter, best-selling author of “The Membership Economy,” shows how to apply the principles of the membership economy to the retail sector.

The webinar explains how to shift the retail paradigm from transactional, where a purchase is considered the finish line, to membership based, where the first transaction is the starting line.

Creating an effective loyalty or membership program is no simple task. Aside from discounts, what can we offer to encourage loyalty? Aside from purchases, what activities and behaviors should we reward?

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The transformation from the transactional economy to the membership economy is taking place along 4 key dimensions. And each dimension, alone, has recently been the source of disruptive innovation:
Membership-Economy

The structure of a loyalty program in the membership economy is just the beginning. The webinar also describes how to address the 4 characteristics of the most successful loyalty programs:

They are aligned with the brand
The program fulfills a customer need
The program adds enjoyment to the customer experience
Redemption is easy

And Manish Chowdhary, CEO of Pulse Commerce, provides additional examples of how companies can go the extra mile:

Pick a creative name. For example, SoccerPro gives customers a ‘PROfile’
Make points sound like treasure. For example, Pixi Beauty’s ‘Pixi Dust’
Reward more than just purchases. For example, rewards for site visits and social shares.
Offer more than just store discounts. For example, free gifts with purchase.

Our free, on-demand webinar demonstrates how your retail business can apply these strategies to improve retention and raise the lifetime value of your customers.

Watch the Free On-Demand Webinar

Written By:

Jeremy Stewart

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

Why Personalized Goods Ecommerce Sites Need Real-time Product Customization

At least 30% of all products purchased online are returned. And of those, 22% are returned because the product received looks different from what was expected. This can be especially true for specialty retailers selling customizable products. What will my custom wedding gift bags look like? How will those monogrammed champagne glasses look?

With billions in lost profits at stake, online retailers are increasingly offering product configurators that help design a product, and then provide 3D visualization of the finished product’s appearance. For example, see a product configuration from My Wedding Reception Ideas’ website.
Product-Configurator-Form
Pulse Commerce’s clientele include several specialty gifts and personalized goods retailers. Photorealistic product configuration using dynamic imaging is one of the game-changing capabilities retailers could provide to help compete more effectively. In fact, analysts estimate that custom products can double conversion rates.

This is why Pulse Commerce partnered with LiquidPixels to bring dynamic imaging and product-configurator features to our clients’ retail and B2B websites. Pulse Commerce serves a number of specialty retailers with custom offerings, including My Wedding Reception Ideas (MWRI).

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Here’s what three CEOs had to say on this topic:

”

From customer feedback and tough industry competition, we at MWRI realized years ago, the need for a robust online proofing system to allow our customers to view their personalized products before purchasing. My Wedding Reception Ideas and Pulse Commerce partnered with LiquidPixels to develop a robust online proofing experience so customers are confident their wedding decorations, favors, or gifts are personalized just the way they want. MWRI has been a Pulse Commerce client for years, creating a solid relationship of trust, and confidence that Pulse Commerce would be able to deliver exactly what MWRI needs to offer an exceptional shopping experience to their online customers.

~Raymond Miller

CEO, My Wedding Reception Ideas

”

Dynamic imaging is now a requirement — essential for being competitive and providing the best possible shopping experience for online shoppers. What was previously a luxury has now become a staple for e-commerce sites. We’re leading the innovation and happy to help partners such as Pulse Commerce show their merchants that dynamic imaging is a necessity and how quickly it can provide value.

LiquidPixels solutions power a wide range of what are called ‘product configurators,’ that enable shoppers to quickly design a nearly unlimited range of product concepts and preview them instantly online. Users can mix, match, add and delete objects such as furniture, clothing, custom text, patterns, textures, and colors. Retailers, interior designers, manufacturers, marketers and any online business that relies heavily on images can benefit from these solutions.

~Steve Kristy

CEO, LiquidPixels

”

Ecommerce has never been so competitive. Barriers for entry are very low, which has caused the number of online stores to skyrocket, and has dramatically reduced switching costs for shoppers. Customer experience is now the main battleground for merchants trying to stand-out in the crowd and captivate shoppers. Only those who deliver an outstanding personalized experience stand a chance, and that’s why this partnership is so important.

~Manish Chowdhary

CEO, Pulse Commerce

About Pulse Commerce
Pulse Commerce is a leading provider of and unified commerce solutions, which enable established merchants to leverage all aspects of omnichannel commerce using a single cloud-based system. We are on a mission to level the omnichannel playing field for mid-market merchants, delivering enterprise strength ecommerce capabilities via cloud-based solutions.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

How to Market and Sell on Pinterest [Webinar]

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

Boost Ecommerce Conversions & Revenue With A/B Testing [Webinar]

A/B testing compares two variations of the same web page, email, ad, or other marketing asset to learn which one performs the best among customers and increases conversion rates and revenue. The change can be as simple as a single headline or button, or be a complete redesign of the marketing asset.

Let’s look at an example:
Version A
AB-Testing-Version-A

Version B
AB-Testing-Version-B
Winner: Version A generated 439% more leads!

Low cost and easy to use, A/B testing has become a go-to technique for marketers striving to increase conversion rates and revenue, often generating 100%+ improvements in critical KPIs. However, there is no magic formula. If A/B test results were repeatable for every website every time, there would be no need to A/B test at all. Every audience is different.

Patrick McKenzie asserts, in a KissMetrics Blog Post about A/B Testing, that success hinges on Incubating a culture of testing – Many companies resort to a culture of “let’s ask what the boss thinks”. Don’t leave it to the boss to decide; let the data decide.

Almost anything on your website, landing pages, and emails can be A/B tested, including headlines, paragraph text, testimonials, calls to action (CTAs), buttons, images, media mentions, promotions, navigation, subject lines, and more.

Slash Your Fulfillment Costs by Up to 30%

Cut shipping expenses by 30% and boost profit with Cahoot's AI-optimized fulfillment services and modern tech —no overheads and no humans required!

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And there are multiple KPIs you may seek to improve, depending on your goals. KPIs to improve include click through rate, average order value, conversion rate, product page views, add to cart rate, and revenue per visitor.

A/B testing seems simple on the surface, but can be quite complex. What do we test? And what metrics are we using to decide whether Option A or Option B wins?

In this free, on-demand webinar, Pulse Commerce’s CEO, Manish Chowdhary, and My Wedding Reception Ideas‘ CEO, Ray Miller, provide retailers with insights on:

What is A/B testing
Why you should use A/B tests
How A/B testing can increase revenue and conversions
Which aspects of ecommerce can be A/B tested
How to conduct a successful A/B test

Watch On-Demand Webinar

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

5 Reasons to Use Pinterest to Market and Sell Your Products [Infographic]

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

How Top Retailers Turn Omnichannel Strategies into Sales

There is growing evidence that consumers like to shop across multiple channels, and the ones that do drive the biggest profits for retailers. Nearly all of the largest retail chains in the U.S. are taking notice—throwing time and money into omnichannel technologies and strategies that more closely link their stores with the web.

”

Customers that shop with us in multiple channels spend three to four times more than a customer that shops in one channel.

~Michael Koppel

Chief Financial Officer, Nordstrom

At the same time, originally web-only retailers such as Warby Parker and even Amazon are expanding into bricks-and-mortar, seeking the optimal balance between online and offline sales.

But there are significant costs and challenges associated with linking back-end order and inventory management systems to enable order-taking from stores, websites and mobile apps. Plus, some merchants do it better than others.

As Amazon’s dominance grows and foot traffic declines in stores across the country, in many ways store-based retailers’ very survival depends on how quickly and effectively they can adapt to ever-growing consumer demands.

In this comprehensive report from Internet Retailer you will learn how the Top 500 retail chains and web-only players are adopting successful omnichannel strategies to drive incredible sales growth and improve customer experience.

Slash Your Fulfillment Costs by Up to 30%

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Learn which retail chains and web-only players are adopting the most successful omnichannel strategies, and how they’re driving sales growth as a result.

This whitepaper includes a breadth of useful insights:

Survey: What consumers really think about omnichannel
Profiles: In-depth profiles on the omnichannel strategies of the Top 30 retail chains
Data: How e-commerce sales compare to physical stores, and How e-commerce sales compare to physical stores
Thought Leadership: Discussion with Pulse Commerce CEO, Manish Chowdhary

”

Traditionally, warehouse management systems handled inventory in the distribution centers, retail merchandising systems handled inventory on the shelves in stores, and enterprise resource planning systems managed the inventory in the supply chain. For retailers wanting omnichannel fulfillment capabilities, breaking down these three different silos becomes very difficult. Unless the retailers truly implement a best-in-class order management system that acts as glue for all three systems and provides real-time visibility of inventory and fulfillment logic, he adds, retailers are going to struggle to successfully implement omnichannel strategies.

~Manish Chowdhary

CEO, Pulse Commerce

Get your free whitepaper

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

How to Calculate ROI for Order Management Platforms

If you’re reading this post, then you’re probably considering upgrades to your commerce technology stack. Retail operations are becoming increasingly complex. Perhaps your ecommerce business has multiple warehouses and sells through your own sites and through marketplaces. Or maybe you’re managing brick and mortar stores and an ecommerce website. Or two.

Either way, keeping track of your online orders and your company-wide inventory is a challenge. Leading to a host of operational problems:

Inventory is too high (and inventory turns too low), tying up your cash in working capital.
Ecommerce returns are increasing because of an uptick in inaccurate orders.
Your warehouses struggle to stay ahead, with greater complexity straining the system.
CSRs are bogged down, using multiple systems to modify orders and resolve issues.

You already know that Order management software will give your company the enterprise-wide view of orders and inventory needed to turn the tide in your direction. But what’s it worth to you?

Slash Your Fulfillment Costs by Up to 30%

Cut shipping expenses by 30% and boost profit with Cahoot's AI-optimized fulfillment services and modern tech —no overheads and no humans required!

I'm Interested in Saving Time and Money

Pulse Commerce’s Order Management System (OMS) ROI Calculator is a great tool to help you figure out how much an OMS can help you increase profits, and what you’ll need to do to make it happen.

An enterprise order & inventory platform drives profit improvement a number of ways:

Inventory Efficiency: Lower average inventory, and higher inventory turns, driven by inventory optimization.
- Real–Time, Enterprise-wide visibility reduces need for “just in case” inventory
- Intelligent Order Routing reduces “slow inventory”
- Greater order accuracy reduces returns and reduces “dead inventory”
- Ability to “ship from store” enables you to fulfill orders when warehouse is out of stock

Fulfillment Efficiency: Reduction in work effort driven by higher order accuracy
- Higher order accuracy reduces returns
- Higher address accuracy reduces shipments to incorrect addresses

Employee Efficiency: Productivity increases
- Warehouses: More efficient order assignments, packing slips and shipping labels
- Contact Centers: Faster issue resolution, because CSRs are armed with a single view of all orders, inventory, customers and fulfillment in real time.

And we’ve done the calculations for you!

Reduction in average inventory increases cash on hand and cuts working capital expenses.
Lower fulfillment error rates reduce return shipping costs, reduce warehouse effort, and also cut down on “dead stock.”
Employees save time with more efficient processes.

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Just input some company information and a few assumptions and you’re done!

We have a couple of additional tools for you if you’re actively shopping for an OMS.

The Pulse Commerce RFP Template for Order Management Systems will save you a lot of time in identifying the most important features for your company.
And our OMS Cost Saving Whitepaper, “5 Hidden Costs to Avoid When Buying an Order Management System” will help you better understand some important considerations when buying an OMS.

Download OMS ROI Calculator

Written By:

Jeremy Stewart

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

How Smart Retailers Use Data to Grow Profitably [Webinar]

Click here to watch on-demand Webinar Data and analytics are the oil of the Internet Age. More and more retailers of all sizes are using data and analytics to improve operations and decision-making. Without this oil, it’s impossible to keep your retail engine running in the race with Amazon and Walmart. In fact, as of August 2017 over 6,300 2017 U.S retail store closings had been announced.

Slash Your Fulfillment Costs by Up to 30%

Cut shipping expenses by 30% and boost profit with Cahoot's AI-optimized fulfillment services and modern tech —no overheads and no humans required!

I'm Interested in Saving Time and Money

To survive in this environment, retailers must analyze and manage against key performance indicators (KPIs) to continuously improve service levels, cut inventory costs, increase conversions, sales, average order values and much more. The good news for middle market merchants is that the data analysis capabilities they need are readily available. Not long ago, the required data and analytics were available only to much larger retailers.
BI-chart-webinar

Amazon + Walmart = Higher service levels + lower prices = Lower Margins

As a result, the retail landscape is changing at a meteoric pace. These companies have increased customer expectations and the cost of delighting consumers. At the same time, they’ve cut costs and continue to grow while maintaining razor thin margins. The impact? Extinction level events are happening thousands of times per year.

Watch our on-demand webinar, How Smart Retailers Use Data to Grow Profitability, to see how mid-market retailers like you can analyze your data and KPIs to increase sales, increase inventory turns, reduce working capital requirements and increase profitability.

This webinar, hosted by Pulse Commerce’s CEO, Manish Chowdhary, and Juno Active’s Jim Nekola, covers:

Important KPIs to track and improve:

Sales KPIs
Order and Inventory KPIs

Important levels of analysis

Store and channel level KPIs and benchmarks
Category, item and sku level KPIs

Critical decisions and their impacts

Which products are driving growth and which are a drag on profits?
Which items should be pruned from the catalog?
Which items should we promote more aggressively?

Juno Active Case Study

How a women’s plus size activewear retailer increases profits with KPI and data analytics
Reports and KPIs for sales, orders and inventory
Critical decisions

Watch it now for some pragmatic tips to help you get ahead of the competition.
Watch On-Demand Webinar

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

Kansas City Coffee Retailer Celebrates 50th Anniversary with a New Tech Twist

How Innovative Ecommerce Technology Helped a Local Staple Become a National Brand

Kansas City, MO – October 3, 2017 – Necco Coffee is celebrating its 50th anniversary as the leading coffee services company in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

When Necco Coffee was founded in 1967, it was impossible to envision the future that awaited 50 years later.

Anthony Simone, Senior set out to source a better cup of java for his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. A coffee connoisseur, he knew what a good cup of joe tasted like, and he knew plenty of people who wanted something better than the grocery store brands in their downtown offices. He grew Necco to become Kansas City’s leader in office coffee and vending services.

At the time, there was no Internet. And there were no K-cups either. Anthony and his company grew, slowly but surely. His service was reliable, delivering on time, and his company always focused on delighting customers. The enterprise expanded to sell coffee supplies, filters, and more.

Fast forward 50 years to 2017, and 11th Street Coffee, the Internet Division of Necco Coffee, is growing fast. 25% fast, while coffee service competitors are either not growing at all or shrinking. Anthony Junior, the founder’s son, is leading that online retail growth with products and sales channels that didn’t exist when he was born. 11th Street Coffee is one of the select few retailers certified to sell Keurig products online. In the span of the last 10 years, they’ve more than doubled their family business by embracing ecommerce, the K-Cup trend, and technology innovation. It has been quite a transformation.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce started off small, piggybacking off the telephone order business. A modest number of orders would come in and go into the queue with the telephone orders scheduled for mail delivery.

And then, the business grew. And grew. Which made it harder and harder to get shipments out the door fast enough. There was just too much paper shuffling. So 11th Street embraced new technology; software that would take their online orders and accurately print out shipping labels and packing slips.

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K-Cups

As K-cups gained popularity, the online business flourished even more. Necco and 11th Street Coffee sought a fairly exclusive arrangement to sell Keurig’s K-Cups online. The business really started to take off now, but their technology wasn’t keeping up.

Speed Bumps Ahead

Soon they hit more speed bumps. Customers wanted to sign up online for ongoing subscription deliveries like they could on Amazon.com. 11th Street Coffee wanted to offer online promotions through social media. Customer service personnel needed easy access to modify online orders up until the UPS guy showed up at the warehouse. More customers were buying on mobile devices. With increased online volume, powerful reporting and business intelligence was needed to make better inventory planning decisions. The current platform couldn’t handle any of it.

Technology Innovation and Partnership

The company set out to better manage their online and offline orders, customer service, procurement, inventory, warehouse and fulfillment. They wanted to keep growing without adding more corporate staff – only more people to fulfill more orders.

They evaluated dozens of software platforms, and finally found a partner who could deliver everything they needed and then some. Pulse Commerce helped 11th Street Coffee transition to their next phase of growth, replatforming their ecommerce and back-office technology in 2013 to enable all the new capabilities they needed. Not a single order was missed or delayed in the transition. And, as soon as their new foundation was in place, their growth skyrocketed, and has been running at double digits since.

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Sustainable High Growth

Today, their customers ‘subscribe and save’, ordering coffee subscriptions online. 11th Street Coffee sets up new promotions and coupons, and distributes them on social media instantly. 11th Street Coffee creates insightful reports with detailed breakdowns. They easily benchmark their operations and continuously improve using the platform’s built-in tools.

Throughout the past 50 years, Necco and 11th Street Coffee have always focused on the customer — whether delivering around the corner or across the country. And whether they’re taking orders by telephone or by mobile device, customer focus has remained at the forefront of every decision they’ve made. Which is why more and more customers decide to buy from 11th Street Coffee every day.

”

Pulse Commerce has the same customer-focused philosophy as ours. They have been amazing business partners we’ve come to consider great friends too. We’re confident in our future, in large part because we’re confident in Pulse Commerce.

~Anthony Simone, Jr.

Owner, 11th Street Coffee

About 11th Street Coffee
11thStreetCoffee.com is the Internet division of a trusted, reliable, family owned and operated team of coffee connoisseurs, with over 50 years of experience in providing coffee service. Their goal is to provide the highest quality coffee products, the fastest turnaround, unbeatable discount prices, and great customer service.

About Pulse Commerce
Pulse Commerce is the leading cloud platform for enterprise order & inventory management empowering retail leaders with unprecedented visibility and control of inventory, orders and customers. Retailers, such as Badgley Mischka, Hanesbrands Inc., and Goode Company rely on Pulse Commerce to improve order turnaround, increase customer satisfaction, and optimize inventory and fulfillment costs. To learn more about how Pulse Commerce can increase your business performance by 20% or more, please visit www.pulse-commerce.com or follow @PulseCommerce on Twitter.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Convert returns into second-chance sales and new customers, right from your store.

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How Innovative Ecommerce Technology Helped a Local Staple Become a National Brand

Ecommerce

Slash Your Fulfillment Costs by Up to 30%

K-Cups

Speed Bumps Ahead

Technology Innovation and Partnership

Looking for a New 3PL? Start with this Free RFP Template

Sustainable High Growth

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

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