For your business to grow, there are 4 things to consider: Cutting running costs, increasing efficiency, increasing reach (therefore sales), as well as the ability to meet demands when they arise. In Ecommerce, saving time and money are straightforward. That said, in order to sell more, one has to increase reach. However, selling more often involves more time and money spent and undercuts the value of Ecommerce.
This is where automation comes in
As your Ecommerce shop scales in demand and volume, repetitions in workflow can occur. A duplicated order made to supplier when replenishing stocks. A now-redundant order as a result of changes in customer’s preferences, but not communicated in time; to cite a few examples. These are repetitions that become increasingly inefficient as old systems become increasingly unsuitable. In Ecommerce, we want things snappy (pun purposefully intended). Time wasted equates a loss in sales. Hence, nothing is more important than achieving an efficient work flow.
Ecommerce automation is about giving time to people and yourself. With the combination of software, hardware and processes, Ecommerce automation should allow an organization to engage in multiple flows simultaneously:
- Reduce manual workload and redundant tasks
- Simplify front and backend services
- Fill up gaps in disconnected workflows
- Enable growth smoothly and efficiently
This can be anything from streamlining reports, standardising work orders to customer segmentation. These play an integral part in ensuring your Ecommerce business work.
Automated product images
Product images are staples in any type of online marketing simply because customers need to know how new products look like. Marketing departments usually hustle to organise relevant logistics needed for a product photo shoot.
However, scheduling a shoot is never easy. Especially not when you are working with a myriad of products and people.
To simplify the front and back-ends of product shoots, automated product photography comes in handy. Smart photography solutions allow you to define essential aspects of a product shoot such as lighting, angle and positioning down to the tiniest degree. Afterwhich, your set adjustments can be saved as presets and used for future product shoots, exactly how it was done the previous round.
Not only does this ensure consistency in your product images, you also shave time off. Such efficiency enables you to churn out high volumes of product images in no time. Most importantly, time can be better spent on other aspects of your work. Which births the exact sentiment of how SnappyFly came about. In our studio, we use these machines to get crisp, consistent-looking images.
Automated logistics
This idea stems from the emergence of containerisation in the shipping industry back in the 1960s. Tldr – cubing dimensions measure your products to be built and customised to your operations.
The demand to meet customers needs quickly and efficiently has never been more important. For Ecommerce, the ability to interpret, use and leverage on data is what sets one apart from others. As with advancements in transport technology, customers expectations increase proportionately. Even in the B2B industry, we too, feel it. More expect B2C user experiences and services in B2B contexts.
Coupled with high volume demands, nailing every parcels’ dimensions down to its last inch contributes to having parcels reach your customers faster. Orders completed efficiently ensures happy customers, higher probability of returning clients – you get the drift.
How can you automate your Ecommerce operation?
Automation is the entry to the future of Ecommerce. Companies have either looked into creating their own in-house processes or a mix and match of different operations.
Begin looking and dissecting your workflow to see if there is any component that tends to be highly labour intensive and causing problems in between. They are likely contenders for you to start exploring for solutions and get innovative.