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Reaching for the Sky: How Cloud Based Retail Order Management Can Help Your Business

Monday, May 20th, 2013

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

If you’re running a small to medium-sized retail business, you are all too familiar with today’s challenges: a tough economy, changing shopping patterns, more competition and higher costs. But did you know that you can run your retail or distribution operations smarter and simpler with just a browser and Internet connection? Cloud based order  management is here and it can transform your business by handling the entire back-end process associated with your business operation. This primarily includes order processing, inventory management, fulfillment and shipping. There are three areas of order management in the cloud that can greatly benefit your operation.

Inventory Management:  The cloud can help you to adapt in near real-time to inventory fluctuations across all selling channels that you utilize including your Web store, Amazon, popular third-party e-commerce software such as Magento, offsite fulfillment centers and other shopping channels. It enables you to enhance your inventory management, allowing you to eliminate slow moving merchandise while increasing the amount of faster selling merchandise.

Improved Marketing: Order management in the cloud provides easy integration of your marketing efforts across all sales channels and customer profiles. Marketing to your existing customer base provides a prime opportunity to capture the value of your customer list to grow your business. This will enable you to segment your customer base, track specific campaign results and create targeted customer lists for marketing efforts.

Better Customer Service: Cloud computing has revolutionized customer service and support, allowing you to answer critical questions in a timely manner that will help you keep customers longer and keep them satisfied. However you interact with your customers, delivering excellent customer service is a key ingredient in developing and nurturing customer satisfaction and retention, and ultimately repeat business through loyalty. It only takes one poor customer experience to produce countless lost customers due to negative reviews and posts online.

If your company’s goal is to operate efficiently across multiple sales channels, provide the ideal customer experience and grow overall revenue, cloud based order management may be just what you need.  Click here to learn more about how retailers who leverage the cloud gain real-time, actionable insight into the details of their business, how they use this insight for growth and increased efficiencies and how they position their business to capitalize on opportunity.

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Is Your Order Management Process Keeping Up With Your Online Store?

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

Online sales are continuing to account for a larger part of total retail sales in the U.S with online growth outpacing total retail sales.  The National Retail Federation predicts that online sales will increase between 9.0% and 12.0% in 2013 vs. 2012.  This is certainly good news for retailers that sell through online channels, but this increase can also pose some challenges for your order management process that you need to be aware of and ready to address.

As online sales increase so do business and operations issues that can prevent you from providing an ideal customer experience and growing your revenue. One of the biggest issues is that SMBs are still moving data manually across different systems which often leads to countless disconnects and lost business.

These manual processes, which typically require rekeying critical order information, invariably lead to errors. For example, an order comes in through your eCommerce store. The order information is then printed out and the data is rekeyed into your separate inventory management system. The details then need to be rekeyed yet again when completing the shipping information and may also need to be entered again into your accounting system for billing.

These repeated manual processes can slow down the business and open the door to human error, leading to delayed shipments, missed deliveries and unhappy customers.  The costs of the errors themselves and then correcting the errors begin to pile up.  They can impact all areas of operations, including customer service, purchasing, receiving, warehousing, fulfillment, accounting, management, and marketing. Larger businesses have more resources to address these issues while smaller and medium sized businesses tend to experience a far greater impact. To compete with the bigger merchants, SMBs must focus on making sure their order management systems are capable of keeping up with the double-digit growth in online sales expected in 2013.

Order Management is the business hub for SMB retailers.  It should be used to eliminate the manual steps between processes as the business grows and should enable you to integrate and automate all order management processes including eCommerce, phone/call center, customer service, payment processing, shipping and 3rd party fulfillment, accounting, tax and billing systems and customer information management.

Don’t let cumbersome, stand alone or outdated order management processing get in the way of growing your business.  Be sure that your back office processes can keep pace with your online store across all key functional areas.

To learn more, click here to download our white paper Retail Trends – Is Your Back Office Keeping Up With Your Online Store?  The Top 5-1/2 Reasons You Need an Order Management Solution. 

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How to Tell if Your Company is Gaining Momentum

Friday, February 8th, 2013

Posted by Laura Hills, VP, Marketing, Dydacomp

In an article written by Kaihan Krippendorff for Fast Company, Dydacomp CEO, Fred Lizza shares his insight into how to read the signs that a company is gaining momentum.  The article, How To Get A Handle On When Your Company Is Gaining Momentum, focuses on Fred’s personal experience and discusses how Fred identified Dydacomp as a growing company before he joined the team. Kaihan ties this idea back to an anecdote about teaching his daughter to ice skate, as he likes to give his articles a personal touch.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Fred Lizza knows how to read the signs. He’s been the CEO of five fast-growing technology companies–Infinium, Idiom, Avotus Corporation, Optiant, and now Dydacomp, a cropped-dyda-logo.jpgsoftware firm that helps small to mid-sized companies automate their fulfillment and direct marketing processes. When Fred joined Dydacomp 24 months ago, the company was in transition. Today, their solutions help small businesses serve more than one million online shoppers per day, linking their orders with more than $4 billion of inventory and submitting over $8 million in daily invoices.

When new investors asked Fred to step in as CEO, Fred saw that Dydacomp was on the path. Here are the signs he read:

1. Dydacomp was at an inflection point, but not in need of dire turn-around. “I don’t like financial turnarounds,” Fred told me.
2. Small and medium-sized businesses comprise more than 50% of consumer sales in the United States and nearly 50% of these are closed using online channels. Both of these factors should grow.
3. The people who run the online businesses are getting more sophisticated. As large retailers shrink, they shake off “reluctant entrepreneurs,” seasoned executives who realize they are better off starting their own enterprises. They are used to having access to sophisticated inventory management systems integrated with sales and marketing systems–exactly what Dydacomp delivers.

These three factors gave Fred the confidence to believe that Dydacomp had an opportunity, in his words, to be “the leader of the middle space.”

Click here to read the entire article.

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Book Sales Jump 51% in December According to Dydacomp’s SMB Index

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

Dydacomp’s SMB Index for December has just been published in Internet Retailer. Our Index provides an indication of how small to mid-sized eCommerce companies, representing more than 15 industry verticals, perform each month.  The data accounts for more than 1.7 million orders that our Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and SiteLINK eCommerce clients receive each month, resulting in more than $200 million in combined monthly retail sales.

Below are the key takeaways from our December report:

  • Dydacomp customers sold more than $300 million dollars in goods in December for the first time ever, processing over 2.4 million orders.
  • There was an 8.0% monthly increase in year over year (Y/Y) same store sales in December 2012. The growth was driven by an almost 10% increase in the average order size.  This growth is a decline in the Y/Y growth rate from November, reflecting an early surge in holiday shopping that slowed in December as consumers were impacted by domestic political uncertainty and economic news.
  • Growth leaders for the full year 2012 are consistent with prior month’s statistics, with books and sporting goods categories leading the way.
    • The growth in the books category seems to have been driven by growing interest in purchasing printed material online.  This category includes many special interest categories, such as religious publications, that are relatively new to online selling and therefore are in the rapid growth phase of development.
    • The growth in sporting goods categories peaked during the warm weather seasons as one would expect, but again is fueled by growth in specialized products that are not readily available on the more commodity sites like Amazon.
    • The nearly 50% year over year growth in December sales for the books category continued the very strong performance by this segment all year long.
    • Higher-priced categories such as jewelry and home furnishings continued to decline in both gross sales and number of transactions.  We attribute much of this weakness to fundamental economic conditions in the US.
    • The average order size increased by almost 10% in December vs. the prior year’s December, and the average order size for 2012 increased almost 5% to slightly more than $130/order.  This increase could be indicative of the return of some pricing power, and resultant price increases, to the market.

Click here to view Dydacomp’s SMB Index in Internet Retailer

 

 

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Online Merchants Enjoy as 12.3% Jump in Sales in November

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

Dydacomp’s SMB Index for November has just been published in Internet Retailer. Our index provides an indication of how small to mid-sized eCommerce companies, representing more than 15 industry verticals, perform each month.

The data accounts for more than 1.7 million orders that our Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and SiteLINK eCommerce clients receive each month, resulting in more than $200 million in combined monthly retail sales.

Below are the key takeaways from our November report:

  • Dydacomp customers sold more than ¼ of a billion dollars in goods in November, processing almost 1.9 million orders.
  • 12.3% monthly increase in year over year same store sales in November 2012, roughly the same growth rate as seen in October. The growth was driven by both an increase in the number of transactions (orders) and an increase in the average order size.
  • Growth leaders are consistent with prior month’s statistics, with books and sporting goods categories leading the way, joined in November by a sizeable jump in Music/video and DVD sales.
  • The nearly 50% year over year growth in November sales for the books category was a surprising jump, although books has shown significant growth rates all year long.
  • Growth in Food and health products slowed in November as gift categories have accelerated with the holiday season.
  • Among other larger-volume categories, toys, which had been declining virtually every month in 2012, showed year-over-year growth as we enter the holiday shopping season.
  • The average order size increased by almost 8% in November to slightly more than $130/order.

We will share December and year-end wrap up numbers soon in an upcoming blog post.

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Get Ready for Free Shipping Day

Friday, December 14th, 2012

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

According to the numbers reported to-date, this holiday season is looking to be the strongest ever for online merchants. More consumers are doing their research online, using sites like PriceGrabber.com to quickly find the best prices, and then making a purchase while avoiding the lines at the store. This makes it critical for online merchants to syndicate their product listings across shopping channels using powerful tools such as GoDataFeed.com.

And there’s still one more big day coming up that online merchants should participate in to drive sales further – Free Shipping Day. On December 17th, over 1,000 online merchants will be offering this deal along with other discounts, according to the web site freeshippingday.com.  Merchants can sign up at this site to list their special promotion for the day to be found by countless new shoppers.

We’ve worked with thousands of eCommerce companies and the free shipping promotion is one of the most effective you can offer. By coupling it with a minimum purchase amount, you can increase the conversion rate while driving up the average order size.

Online shoppers are more savvy and have more resources so in order to boost sales, you need to take advantage of these special days.

For more tips, click here to download our white paper The Top 7 Reasons You Need Effective Retail Promotions.

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Dydacomp SMB Index: Online Merchants Have Big Jump in Online Sales in October

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

Dydacomp’s SMB Index for October has just been published in Internet Retailer. Our index provides an indication of how small to mid-sized eCommerce companies, representing more than 15 industry verticals, perform each month.

The data accounts for more than 1.7 million orders that our Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and SiteLINK eCommerce clients receive each month, resulting in more than $200 million in combined monthly retail sales.

Below are the key takeaways from our October report:

  • 12.2% is the highest monthly increase in year over year same store sales in 2012. Total number of transactions increased by 6.5% in October, reinforcing the healthy growth message.
  • Growth leaders are consistent with prior month’s statistics, with books and sporting goods categories leading the way.
  • Sporting Goods accelerated growth in October making it the number one vertical for the month, in terms of sales growth.
  • Food & health product sales bumped up again in October after a flat September. However, the number of orders in this category declined again in October indicating growth was largely driven by price increases.
  • Among other larger-volume categories, toys, which had been declining virtually every month in 2012, showed year-over-year growth as we enter the holiday shopping season.  In addition, auto parts regained further growth momentum in October.

The average order size increased by over 5% in October.

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Last Minute Holiday Tips for Your eCommerce Store

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

The results are in and Cyber Monday was a resounding success for etailers. But online merchants are still working feverishly to boost end of year revenues. Below are a couple of recommendations to help you make this holiday season even stronger.

PriceGrabber conducted a recent survey and found that 88% of respondents plan on conducting research before moving forward with a gift purchase. To ensure these shoppers are finding you, syndicate your product listings across the Web’s most popular shopping channels. Using a solution such as GoDataFeed will help you gain visibility on more than 70 online comparison shopping sites, marketplaces and affiliate networks

You should also have several promotions standing by in case sales aren’t exactly where you want them to be this time of year. For example, if you ran a free shipping promotion that didn’t boost sales, try offering ‘buy one get one’ discounts. Or offer a discount with a coupon code that gets circulated on the coupon sites. These sites are free and give you additional opportunities to reach those researching shoppers.

Another powerful promotion you can run is targeted to abandoned shopping carts. If you’re able to capture the email from an abandoned cart, you can send an automated email with an additional discount offer if the transaction is completed. This will go a long way in pushing that order through and gaining a new customer.

These are just a handful of tips that will help you this holiday season. Feel free to contact us at info@dydacomp.com or 800-858-3666 if you have any questions or would like additional tips.

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The Best Promotion for Cyber Monday

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

As the Black Friday frenzy is about to begin, countless online retailers are gearing up for the biggest online shopping event – Cyber Monday. Behind the scenes, decisions are being made about what products will go on sale, what promo codes will be created, and how steep the discounts will be. But the biggest deal that online shoppers are looking for when making a purchase is free shipping. Research is available that clearly shows the connection between free shipping and the order value. In short, consumers spend more in order to receive the benefit.

Of course, small retailers know there is no such thing as free shipping. A merchant considering offering this promotion for the first time should tie it into a minimum purchase requirement. This approach increases the average order size so as not to cut too deeply into your profits.

Another recommendation is to include online coupons that offer an additional discount on an order. These coupons can be promoted on third party coupon sites for free. Consumers flock to these sites to find deals before making a purchase. If your competitor is listed and you’re not, you most likely lost a sale.

As you plan your promotions for Cyber Monday, also remember that Free Shipping Day is coming up on December 17th. If you are considering offering free shipping but can’t afford to do so on a regular basis, you may want to test the offer on this day.

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Part V: The Top 5 Business Issues You Need to Fix Today to Experience Double Digit Growth

Friday, November 16th, 2012

Posted by Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp

#1: Time Consuming Manual Processes

The top business issue that is preventing growth may also seem like the easiest to fix. SMBs are still moving data manually across different systems and this lends to countless disconnects in your business, including visibility into your customers. These manual processes including rekeying order information that invariably leads to errors. For example, an order comes in through your eCommerce store. The order information is then printed out and the data is rekeyed into your inventory management system. The details then need to be rekeyed when completed the shipping information. And sometimes the data needs to be rekeyed again into your accounting system.

All of these manual processes and disconnects slow down your business and open the door to human error, leading to delayed shipments and missed deliveries. The costs begin to add up and it affects all areas of your operations, including customer service, purchasing & receiving, warehouse & fulfillment, accounting, management, and marketing.

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