June 2022 - Striven

5 Important Steps to Optimize Your Order Management Process

Order management is a crucial process which starts from receiving customer purchase orders, ranking them subject to priority (either by their total value, the product availability, or urgency of delivery), picking and organizing them, to packaging and shipment.

A smooth order management system not only makes your business operation simpler and more effective but ensures that your customers always receive their orders in timely fashion. Let’s look at 5 significant steps you can follow to further optimize your order management process.

1. Rely on the right order management system

Order management is a fundamental part of your warehouse operations when it comes to the way your customers receive their items. Once your store begins to get more orders, manually taking care of each step in the process could become somewhat cumbersome.

One of the surefire ways often trusted by businesses is switching to an intuitive order management software that can handle the entire fulfillment processes, streamline your shipping and tracking, and allow you to organize your store across all sorts of channels. With an order management system, you can dedicate more time to growing your business instead of managing each individual order Before choosing any solution, you should spend time evaluating the different types of order management software solutions on the market.

2. Consider a fulfillment integration

A fulfillment center (Amazon fulfillment centers being a common example) handles the essential processes of managing products bought by your customers, including order receiving, processing, and shipment. Other common integrations that are popular with inventory management software systems are ShipStation, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

striven integrations

It is worth mentioning that even for retailers that use 3rd-party services to take care of order fulfillment, a fulfillment integration will let you monitor the status of every order.

3. Make your inventory work for you

Picture this: your goal is to sell the hottest items on the market. You’re already the main supplier of the best products, with high-functioning warehouses and sufficient inventory all set to fulfill your customer’s demands. But due to events out of your control, the market shifts unexpectedly. The weather took a turn for the worse, which translates to changing customer demands. Your sales haven’t stopped completely, but the inclement weather has left you with more inventory that you can immediately offload. How should your business handle this?

To keep your stock at ideal levels no matter what the outside circumstances throw at you, you may choose to implement reorder level assignments. Maintaining this safe level enables you to wait to replenish inventory while still selling the inventory you already have on site. Likewise, with it, you can improve your cash flow by paying more attention to products that are in higher demand instead of those that are only a waste of storage space.

Many businesses consider using the JIT (Just-in-Time) stock management method where you receive the items only when you need them. In a situation where you find yourself with many goods kept far longer in your warehouse even after you implement this new process, you should explore the most practical way to convert them into cash. For example, make use of clearance sales, product bundling, or promotions.

4. Deal with shipment uncertainties

To handle shipping uncertainties, prioritize working with a reliable delivery carrier that has received positive feedback from not only sellers but also purchasers. Consider services that provide integration to your order management system. This should enable you to create delivery orders with labels the moment you complete preparing the packages, thus empowering you to monitor them with ease. 

If you’re curious about how to discover a suitable delivery carrier for your store, we suggest starting checking online seller forums. Aside from being trusted and providing real-time order tracking to ensure transparency, your carrier should enable insuring the goods for any possible loss coverage.

5. Simplify the product returns process

Let’s face it, you can’t avoid returns completely. Sometimes its the buyer nitpicking at trivial problems, but other times it is a serious product malfunction. Either way, these instances take the pleasure out of the customer’s shopping experience. This has a direct effect on profits, not to mention the fact that repeatedly dealing with unhappy purchasers can leave your employees unhappy and disgruntled. Above all, when it comes to returns, what happens to the products returned to the warehouse? Does your staff deal with returns based on a standard protocol or is it a more haphazard process?

To improve the return process, you should have a standard operating procedure surrounding returns. Once you get the products back from the buyers, put tags on them outlining their physical condition. Add the sellable goods right back to your stock, whereas consider returning faulty ones to the manufacturers or having them fixed. Under the least favorable circumstances, get rid of them.

You may want to reserve a part of your inventory within your warehouse for replacements, samples, and other promotional events. Several warehouses choose to keep reserved goods in separate areas to speed up the product returns process and diminish their effects on the regular supply of goods.

Wrapping Up

With competition between businesses being at an all time high, you must pay careful attention to the order management process of your stores. Refer to the crucial steps mentioned above to streamline and further optimize your business and your bottom line.

Segmented Email Marketing in 2022: 4 Tips For Growing Businesses

A good email marketing campaign relies heavily on email segmentation. That’s why email continues to be the most effective channel for nurturing and converting leads into customers.

Email segmentation, as the name implies, breaks your email list subscribers into groups based on shared characteristics, demographics, or habits. Before commencing any email marketing campaign, it’s critical to segment your emails. It ensures that your leads receive highly focused and tailored content.

As a result, the likelihood of them becoming clients improves. That’s why businesses that use email marketing see a 38x return on their investment.

Despite this, 89% of companies, including B2B and B2C, do not use email segmentation. This is only one of the numerous reasons why email marketing strategies fail for so many organizations.

Don’t worry if you’re one of them!

In this blog post, we’ll go through various email segmentation tactics that you may use to segment your email list right away. But first, let’s define the term “email marketing segmentation.”

What Is Segmented Email Marketing?

Segmented email marketing is the practice of dividing your email subscribers list into smaller sections. The subscribers are segregated into groups based on some specific sets of conditions. This practice of segmented email marketing is mainly performed for increasing the engagement levels of your campaigns.

Your target audience is bound to consist of a wide variety of people who have different interests, behaviors, and digital profiles. So delivering the same old email copy to each reader simply does not make any sense.

Enter segmentation strategy! It works mainly because it involves delivering personalized content that resonates with the specific segment of the target audience. The fact that segmented emails have a 100.95% higher click rate and 14.31% higher open rates than non-segmented emails is a proof that the effort bears sweet fruits. So let’s dive right into a few tips that will help your email marketing campaigns achieve such magnificent results for your business.

1. Understand The Basics

The word “email list segmentation” is derived from the more generic term “market segmentation,” which refers to the process of breaking a target audience into logical subgroups based on stated criteria. 

The concept is the same in email marketing, but you start with your email contact list rather than your entire audience. Like any other marketing campaign, you have to have a thorough idea of the basics before launching a full-fledged segmentation strategy.

To begin, you should know that there are four broad segmentation categories:

  • Demographic: This type of segmentation is performed based on the core identity of email subscribers. For example, you can segment based on gender or age.
  • Psychographic: Next sort of segmentation is done by considering specific types of characteristics or personality traits. Here you will segregate on the basis of the reader’s lifestyle or values.
  • Behavioral: This one’s the most prominent type of segmentation. You need to implement this for maximum engagement. Here you will group the subscribers based on their buying patterns like ticket size, purchasing frequency, and so on.
  • Geographic: Location-based segmentation is pretty straightforward. Here you can cater to the subscribers via the local events.

Since most segmentation strategies revolve around gathering meaningful data, the only logical next step would be to gain clarity on your data points.

2. Establish Data Points

First and foremost, you cannot create segments without data. The information that is most important to your business will be determined by the type of product you sell. 

For example, if you’re in the clothes and apparel sector, gender and age will be the most important aspects to consider when segmenting your email list. However, if you’re selling a SaaS product or marketing software, you might want to know your subscriber’s industry and occupation.

Decide what client information will help you sell more productively, how you’ll organize that data, and how you’ll obtain the data. Then find a way—either by creating your own set of icons or downloading an existing icon set from the Internet—to convey those segments visually. Here, the main goal is to bring your consumers to the activation stage of sales funnel, whether that means buying something or using a certain function.

Consider this: Successfully retaining even 5% more clients could result in a 25% boost in profit. So inactivity is something you should be aware of. Focus on improving your data-gathering methods to meet your conversion goals to make the most of your email marketing.

Ponder the following three questions:

  1. What information do we already have? – These are the segments with the lowest entry barriers.
  2. What kind of information can we start gathering? – These are data points that you can track but haven’t arranged into useful information yet.
  3. What information do we require? – This is information that you must directly seek from your users or devise a method to gather.

3. Etch Out User Personas

Customers who fit perfectly into a company’s sales funnel are well-known to all businesses. If you provide eCommerce order fulfillment services, for example, an online store fits neatly into your funnel. 

However, if a college student signs up and becomes a subscriber, your prospects of making a sale are reduced on several levels.

As a result, determining your buyer’s persona appropriately is a crucial step in segmenting your email lists. To put it another way, you’re developing the personality of your ideal consumer.

Identifying your customer’s persona serves as a starting point for developing critical messaging. To define your buyer’s persona, use the following checklist:

  • Examine your customer’s demographics
  • Look at your clients’ preferences, their behavior, the things they’re interested in, and the date they signed up
  • Determine the primary issues that your clients are experiencing
  • What are your options for resolving these issues?

4. Leverage Relevant Email Copy

It’s time to write your email after you’ve created your first set of email lists. You must generate content that is well-tailored and customized for your segmented email groups. 

You don’t have to write a completely new email copy for each segmented list. Instead, change the material in your email copy to fit the target groups. After all, personalization in email campaigns can increase your revenue by 760%.

To perfect their email lists, most businesses conduct numerous rounds of tests. 

Another aspect of segmenting your email lists is to aim for hyper-segmentation. It’s quite straightforward. You send a few email campaigns to your first email lists to see how they respond. You could identify gaps in your segmentation process by doing this exercise.

But don’t underestimate the difficulty of this task. You must write emails that are relevant to your target audiences. Sending too many emails may end up in your recipient’s spam folder.

To save time and money, consider using a free AI writing solution that can help you create effective emails tailored specifically for each segmented list.

Wrapping Up

Now that you’ve learned the ropes, it’s time to move away from generic emails and toward more personalized interactions with your subscribers. Begin by selecting one critical variable that distinguishes different segments of your audience.

You may then tailor your campaigns to meet their various requirements. Even modest tweaks to your emails can improve their effectiveness, resulting in increased engagement and conversions. 

Striven Earns #1 Spot On G2’s “Momentum Leader” ERP Report

Lumberton, NJ (June 24, 2022)-  G2, the leading provider of business software reviews, has ranked Striven as the top ERP software in its Summer 2022 Momentum Report.

According to customer-sourced data at G2:

  • Striven’s Quality of Support ranks as 9.2/10 (ahead of the 8.2/10 ERP average)
  • Striven’s Ease of Use ranks as 8.8/10 (ahead of the 8.2/10 ERP average)
  • Striven’s positive customer feedback has jumped 50% (ahead of the 15% ERP average)
  • Striven’s web growth has surged by 91% (ahead of the 10% ERP average)

Striven helps small to midsize businesses get organized, streamline processes, and enable growth. The G2 results arrive as more SMBs in manufacturing, field service management, and professional services are pivoting toward fully cloud-based management solutions. Striven’s #1 placement in G2’s Momentum Report underscores this growing and fast-moving trend. 

“The entire team at Striven is driven by the amazing and thoughtful feedback that our customers give us each day,” said Chris Miles, CEO of Miles Technologies, the company that develops Striven. “We built this product to make a positive impact in the lives of business owners and employees. We’re heartened by the success of the businesses that use Striven to accomplish their goals, and we’re even more excited for what the future of Striven has in store. ”

Dan M., a CTO who uses Striven to manage his company’s daily operations, added this about his experience with the system:

 “Striven is a great ERP system for small and medium sized companies. It has good capabilities in project management, as well as customer, vendor, and item management. It also has a robust CRM module.”

To learn more about Striven and read about customer experiences using the platform, visit the company’s ratings and review page.

About Striven
Striven is an ERP software for small and growing businesses that want to expand, simplify, and reduce costs. Striven combines all of the features for accounting, projects, sales, inventory, management, reporting, and more into a single streamlined system.

Inventory Software: A How-To Guide To Effectively Managing Your Supplies

In a competitive market, high-quality businesses and their employees rely on established and practical systems to assist them to rise above the competition. Inventory software continuously improves and monitors, integrates, channels, empowers and monitors warehouse processes to ensure businesses will avoid unfulfilled orders and the misuse of necessary time.

Without tracking the amount of inventory a business has, where each item is located, and forecasting an accurate quantity needed for future sales, a company will fail to turn a profit and generate growth. As a result, inventory management software rids a successful business owner of the tedious time spent tracking inventory with pencil and paper and replaces this process with more efficient technology to track when shipments arrive, where raw materials are, and when products are on the move.

Multiple types of businesses use inventory software, equipment inventory software, or even warehouse inventory management software to raise their business to the level of which they previously only dreamt of doing. In a simplified example, an individual company owner may have various suppliers and could be working on an ad-hoc basis in terms of their supply. How long can they maintain effective business practices under these conditions solely using spreadsheets or other  less efficient methods of inventory tracking? The answer is that it is more effective, both in cost and time, to use an all in one inventory management software that serves you and your business to ensure that inventory is not over-ordered nor under-stocked.

Inventory Management via Inventory Software

The first step for small and growing business owners after acquiring their inventory is to sell their product to the market. However, this process may be overwhelming, especially when attempting to manually input and interpret your inventory levels and order flow. Having a clear and accurate view of your ROI is integral for all businesses, so inventory software is an obvious choice for any type of business owner that is looking for a better way to track this data. Inventory software controls stock levels, saves space, maximizes the value of labor, satisfies customers, and reduces the use of other fixed assets to also save you and your business from unnecessary costs.

The Cost Of Inventory Software

Most inventory management software is cloud-based and will not necessitate the individual to maintain servers, hire an IT staff, or make other excessive hardware purchases. All of the servers and necessary equipment are managed by the software company itself, saving companies a lot of money, time and energy.

The cost of cloud-based inventory management software is based on a monthly subscription rate, but it is also determined by several other factors, including the size of your business. Retail point of sale software (POS) may be a starting point for most businesses, but when your business is ready to grow and scale, many businesses find that POS software alone is insufficient.  This is because POS systems solely keep track of sales and accept payment from customers, which ignores tracking inventory, establishing the quantity and time that inventory needs to be reordered, effective inventory turnover, and does not mitigate human error by automating tasks that help to fulfill sales quickly.

Approximately 46%  of the businesses surveyed in Wasp Barcode’s State of Small Business Report fail to track inventory and/or  use manual processes. Those companies are not receiving the same benefits in relation to maintaining competitiveness in the marketplace, increased efficiency, saving money in the long run, and freeing up employees to do less monotonous tasks.

Inventory Software’s Role in Inventory Turnover

A key metric for all businesses is inventory turnover: the cost of goods sold divided by the average inventory on hand. If the rate is too low or too high, a business is in danger of overstocking, not meeting consumer demand, and dealing with the deteriorating value of stagnant products on a shelf.

Podium LLC, a manufacturer based out of South Carolina, saw their inventory counting time decrease by 90% when taking advantage of an inventory management solution. 

Inventory software helps businesses meet their desired inventory turnover ratio by providing inventory tracking, effective and time-efficient reordering, and accounting integrations which serve to prevent double-entry of data and automate yet another task that can free up time to focus on other needs for your business.

Takeaway

Inventory software is the most effective manner in which a business can successfully manage maintaining proper inventory levels while maintaining high levels of customer (and employee) satisfaction.  It can provide business  owners with the ability to spend their time doing other tasks besides manually organizing their spreadsheets or over ordering products that are not necessarily needed in bulk at the time. Inventory management software  acts as a digitized assistant, allowing for professionalism, profitability, and efficiency to shine through where, without it, only ambiguity and indecisiveness are present.

The Case For Using Better Quote Management Software

Quoting software plays a pivotal role for businesses attempting to maintain continuous growth. Since price quotes are often the first thing a customer sees during the purchasing process, a detailed transcript that clearly presents prices for services or products is crucial for closing deals and building communication and trust.

A quote management software that automates this process helps grow long-term relationships with customers in the easiest and most efficient way possible. The benefits of a great quote management software are numerous and can significantly improve the bottom line of all kinds of businesses.

A quoting management software for small businesses automates the process of invoicing, auditing, document management, report generation, and employee management. The best quote management software builds the businesses reputation by increasing customer loyalty, leading to the ability to generate maximum profits.

Quote Management Software: What You Need To Know

Quotation management software is a type of application that allows a business to create quotes and invoices in a way that is convenient for both the business and the customer. Most quote management systems are web-based applications that are designed to automate the quotation process in order to improve its efficiency and effectiveness for all parties involved. Using the best quote management software makes it easy to record information and saves time for teams to focus on other tasks. The reason behind this is that manual methods are much slower (not to mention less accurate) when it comes to preparing quotes for customers and clients to view.

quote management software

Using the best quotation management software, small and growing businesses can prepare and send quotes to customers more efficiently, automate the invoice generation process, remotely manage billing, enhance reporting, categorize items, and provide valuable insight and feedback on sales and missed opportunities.

Some of the key features to look out for when looking for the best quotation management software: Painless onboarding, premier usability,, customizable quote templates, product and service catalogs, multi-channel quote management, online signatures, one-click invoices, and payment tracking.

There are many types of quoting software on the market that can fulfill your needs. Since there are many options out there, your business needs to find the quote management software that fits it the most. This will help your business to improve its workflow, data management, and develop long-term financial growth.

The Importance Of a Quoting System

Delivering a quote quickly to the customer improves the ability a business has to communicate with its customers, bringing a greater chance of earning the business of customers far and wide. Delays, bottlenecks, and losses in sales routinely harms businesses. However, using quote management technology, businesses can find ways to increase sales while avoiding these pitfalls.

A good quoting software is essential for any small or medium sized business that is looking to increase sales. For businesses that are still growing, the importance of delivering quick quotes to customers is enhanced. Businesses that are able to efficiently and effectively handle the quotation process will be able to see their sales rise and their retention rates increase.

Does Your Business Have The Best Job Management Software System?

For growing businesses, choosing the right job management software system is a crucial step in the maturation process. Job or Project management software systems handle a wide range of tasks for businesses, so the right software can drastically improve the overall efficiency of a business. But what makes a great job management software system? Let’s explore what features to look for in elite business management software.

What Is a Job Management Software System?

Job Management

Before outlining the specifics of what makes a great job management software system, let’s define the term first. Job management systems are a way to focus and organize a growing business.

They accomplish this goal by centralizing data in one location and by helping users prioritize tasks. After tasks are prioritized and assigned, this type of software acts as a streamlined tool for scheduling and meeting deadlines. Job management software systems can also offer estimates and quotes, track purchase orders, help track and hire applicants, and provide templates for common business documents, such as invoices and marketing emails. Job management software systems can accomplish a lot for growing businesses. But what makes something the best software out there? Let’s dive in.

Features of the Best Job Management Software System

As I mentioned previously, job management software centralizes and secures your business’s data. However, managing data is not the only thing a job management software system can accomplish.

A job management software system is also capable of handling document management, offering price quotes and estimates, scheduling, and managing time sheets.

job management software

Additionally, a growing business is going to want a job management software system that is frequently updated and improved upon. As Nishant Nair from Forbes points out, “Software should be agile enough to work according to business processes.” Frequent updates will keep your job management software system running properly and effectively, avoiding future headaches.

Usability Is Important 

It’s great if a job management system can do everything that it advertises, but none of these capabilities matter if the user interface of the software is clunky and complicated. So, what makes the usability of a job management software elite? Like almost all other types of software and technology, a great system is partially defined by how easy it is to use. If the system is too complicated for the average person to get their head around, it can’t be used to its fullest potential. 

Customer Service Makes All The Difference

Another major component of what makes a great job management system is the quality of its customer support. There are always bound to be a few hiccups along the way when implementing a new software system.

business culture communication cartoon among three people

That’s why the best job management software system is accompanied by excellent customer service to help growing businesses when they need it.

Because at the end of the day, no one wants to deal with what The New York Times calls “Tech Support Rage”. Instead of dealing with a company that is “aware of the torture they are putting you through,” with poor help, automated messages, and being put on hold indefinitely, look for a job management software system that comes with a helpful and present customer support team that works with customers one on one to solve their most pressing issues.

five customer service people providing outstanding software support

What Is A Fair Cost For A Job Management System?

There isn’t an exact price range that can be given when looking for the best job management software system. Ultimately, it comes down to finding the best fit for your company at a price you can afford and that works best within the framework of your business.

However, here is one useful tip to consider when shopping around: look for a job management software system that is all-inclusive.

job management software system

Some job management software systems are modular, meaning you only pay for certain modules that perform certain functions. Initially, this may sound appealing, since no one wants to pay for functions that they don’t use, but in the long run, this kind of system can be more of a hassle than a profitable investment.

As your business grows, it also grows increasingly likely that your business will end up needing to purchase many additional modules. This can get pricey and technically complicated. At the end of the day, it typically ends up costing more than if your company bought an all-in-one software that comes preloaded with every feature at an affordable, flat cost.

Although a growing business might not be able to afford the expense of a larger job management software system used by Fortune 500 companies, there are other options that exist at a more reasonable price well within a small business budget. In the end, your business will still save on costs because you’ll have one software that accomplishes the same job that multiple software systems perform.

The Takeaway

In the end, the best job management software system will come down to the needs of your growing business. It’s important to keep in mind that not all job management software systems are created equal and that the best job management systems will be flexible to your needs and offer comprehensive, creative solutions to all of the pressing challenges that your business faces.