Setting up an online business doesn’t have many barriers, but maintaining the business requires substantial effort, especially if you want to scale up. To deal with the complexities of business management, you can embrace technology that streamlines workflows and improve your operational efficiency. Investing in good software will help you save time on repetitive tasks and push your business to go faster. Let’s explore the benefits and the 5 most important management software features that help online business owners achieve their goals.

Why Do You Need A Management Software?

Business management software can support you in various aspects of both internal and customer-facing work. It can be a system for retail store management, inventory management, content and social media management, employee scheduling, analytics, and accounting.

Controlling the full spectrum of the business on 1 platform provides you with data centralization and consistency. Here’re the benefits of management system: 

• Ensure alignment for different teams: Since all data and documents are synced in 1 place, your employees can get access to the latest data and avoid discrepancies.
• Standardized processes: Software is the digital solution to control business. It simplifies processes, makes sure people know their jobs and can access the resources they need.
• Automate tasks to save time and money: Automation is the best way to scale up with minimized human resources. It eliminates human errors and saves time on manual tasks, thus freeing up your employees for more important tasks that improve the products and customer experience. 

5 Features To Expect In A Business Management Software

As an online business owner, you need to control your remote teams and offer outstanding services to customers. To do that, here are the 5 management system features you need:

1. A simple and secure payment process

When customers place an online order, simplicity and security are their foremost requirements. To attract more online shoppers, you must provide a seamless payment process for your site. People want a safe and simple way to make purchases. Here’re some ideas you can implement:

• Accepting multiple payment methods to give convenience for customers, such as debit card, credit card, mobile payment, buy-now-pay-later, etc. 
• Attach a checkout button that is easily accessible to take customers straight to their cart with order details, delivery information, and point of sale. 
• Show the real-time availability of each product during customer browsing.
• Display a confirmation page when customers have placed the order successfully.

You can easily set up and manage these options with a point-of-sale feature inside the management software. It helps you process payments smoothly and control other actions, such as order returns or exchanges.

2. Customer relationship management (CRM)

Managing customer data is essential to understand their behaviors and preferences, improve your products and services, and retain existing customers. To record and analyze customer data, you need a CRM feature in your management software package. An effective CRM allows you to find insights about customers, such as your main targets, their pain points, what they like and dislike, etc. From there, you can design suitable products and marketing programs that boost sales and foster customer trust and loyalty. 

CRM helps you stay connected with customers via many functions like audience segmentation, scheduled messaging, and customer service channels (ticketing systems or live chats). In this way, you can maintain your customer contacts, plan regular messaging to customers, and keep them engaged.

3. Project Management

For startups and small businesses, the project management feature is essential to organize and control a multitasking team. This system allows you to set up detailed objectives, assign tasks suitable for each employee’s workload, and track their progress in real time. It makes the workflows more dynamic, creates an agile working approach, and prevents bottlenecks in teamwork. This is especially useful if you have multiple projects at the same time, or if you have different teams overlap in their tasks.

For instance, the marketing has to secure qualified leads for the sales team to proceed with their work. A project management system can offer tools to assign, re-assign, add resources, and close projects without confusion.

4. Inventory Management

If you’re an online merchant, inventory management is your business backbone. With the right software to control stock, you can solve many problems and open up sales opportunities as well. Here are some aspects that a good system is capable of: 

• SKUs management: You should be able to add, edit, and sync product information with sales and vendor data. Although being a startup, think about if the system can scale with you if you expand. Ideally, it should allow you to easily add unlimited SKUs and control them.
• Real-time stock tracking: The system can give you visibility on your inventory level and any stock allocations or movements. It means sales orders are synced with stock data, and goods purchased from suppliers are added once they’re scanned in the warehouse. Any stock returns and exchanges must reflect in the inventory position as well.
• Low stock alerts and reorder points: The system should let you set automatic alerts when your stock reaches a specific level, and assist you to quickly generate a PO for that alert.
• Procurement and supplier management: Controlling your purchasing is an important aspect of stock management. This feature digitizes various procurement activities, such as:
  • Create and autofill your purchase orders, and add any quantity discounts
  • Centralize all supplier details and track their performance based on product quality, price, delivery speed, and customer support.
  • View your purchase history with each vendor

5. Performance Metric Monitor

When you open your online store, tracking key performance metrics from the start is critical. The management software should make it easy for you to measure your results, such as site traffic, conversion rate, average order value, inventory turnover rate, and many more. 

These metrics help you understand how you are performing and give you insights into different aspects that need improvement. Therefore, you should look for software that has a built-in analytics dashboard that allows you to create customized reports to investigate deeper. Filter by criteria to help you identify the data you need and address any trends or issues. Analyzing data is the key to understanding your business and customers to make the right decisions for your startup growth.

In Conclusion

Business management software is essential for online businesses to organize teams, save time, reduce costs, and boost morale. Adopting the modern technology solution can help you operate your store smoothly, and quickly determine any threats or opportunities for improvement across all aspects: customer experience, inventory management, employee retention, and vendor relationships.