Print Order Management System: An Intricate Mastery of It & Why Choose One?

Blog Synopsis – Print businesses of all niches often have to struggle with their order management cycle because of a lot of manual intervention, causing high expenditures and frequent errors. To solve this problem, an automated print order management system (POMS) is the key driver. In this blog, we will discuss the POMS in a comprehensive way, covering all aspects of it and explaining why it is essential for each PSP to embrace an automated order management system.

Print service providers typically receive orders from over five sales channels and serve walk-in customers simultaneously. And managing all of them together, like brick-and-mortar, e-commerce stores, orders from calls, emails, and large B2B customers, is almost impossible without an order management system. However, opting for a digital purchase order management system helps them effortlessly process orders from multiple sales channels for any print business. Thus, going beyond manual processes, more and more PSPs like you should embrace an online order management system.

So, if you still need to start using print order management software, make the right move soon!

Today, in this blog, we will discuss the multichannel order management system for printers in detail. From what the print order management system is exactly and its varied components to the ever-growing importance of POMS in the print industry and much more. Let’s dive in.

What is a Print Order Management System?

The print order management system (POMS) is a digital method of managing the lifecycle of a print order; from start to end.

The best-in-class print order management system software are driven mainly by the web2print technology. It automatically manages all information and procedures, including estimation, artwork design and approval, order entry, invoicing and payment, fulfilment, and after-sales service. POMS gives visibility to both the company and the buyer both.

It lets customers stay informed about their orders and automate strenuous tasks for businesses, leading you grow your print business incredibly. The life cycle of the best order management system begins when a consumer places an order and ends when they receive their goods or services.

A print shop order management software allows you to set up special product pricing and ordering flow and automate the production functionality to manage customer and order data, making the reordering process easier. On top of that, a print e-commerce order management software offers extensive third-party integration with the workflow so you can track every order moving from one department internally or outsourced. It also comes with essential CRM MIS, CRM, accounts, and marketing tools for end-to-end automation.

Transform Your Print Order Management with the Manual to Automation Shift

As per studies, 55% of retailers use a pen-and-paper manual process at some point in their fulfilment process. And managing different fulfilment stages this way or using a spreadsheet causes multiple errors, including:

• Missed orders
• Incorrect estimation
• Incorrect order information
• Higher turnaround time
• Overbooking due to stock irregularities

Furthermore, print service providers often face problems delivering consistent customer service due to high dependency on their team. The human-centric disintegrated process of manual order management stops PSPs from offering flawless CX. However, as per the customer experience study, 73% of customers say that customer experience is a major deciding factor while purchasing. Also, it depicts that focusing on a good customer experience can increase your average order value by 190%.

An automated and intelligent print order management system acts as a rescuer here!

It helps to offer a consistent customer experience. Also, you can 360-degree automate the processing workflow of orders from multiple channels like websites, calls, emails, walk-ins, etc., further deciphering the operational problems visually highlighted in the above image.

Moreover, today’s highly competitive print industry needs more than just a vanilla OMS, as the fulfilment process for completing print orders is far more complex and needs additional procedures than usual retail fulfilment. Understanding the exclusivity of the print order management system in detail and leveraging it can help PSPs like you organize and automate critical parts of fulfilment activities like:

• Sending estimation
• Taking order data
• Artwork designing
• Artwork approval
• Collecting payment
• Making job tickets
• Managing order workflow through production
• Maintaining inventories
• Shipping out to customers
• Handling returns and after-sales services

You must be clear by now about the utmost significance of a print order management system in solving your print business’s significant order management challenges. Now, let’s explore an in-depth overview of the essential components of a POMS that make it stand out.

Critical Components of Print Order Management System

An ideal purchase order management software has six critical components that synchronize your order management workflow with a step-by-step process. With integrated print shop management, you can automate your entire order fulfilment cycle, saving you labor costs, efficiently managing the inventory, and significantly reducing work errors. This, in turn, makes your print business more innovative and future-proof.

We have discussed the six components of automated inventory and order management software below:

• Estimation & ordering module
• Artwork design and approval module
• Order processing module
• Workflow module & job board
• Vendor & procurement management
• Dashboard & reports module

Instant estimation allows you to increase 21X probability of winning new orders compared to taking much time using Excel sheets to estimate every order. This order management module can efficiently set up product pricing on your web2print storefront, handle B2B clients, efficiently provide quotes, and manage them. After order confirmation, an order management system can auto-update the details and outsource to vendors if needed.

Automating the quotation process not only increases the chance of winning sales but also reduces human intervention, leading to fewer errors and higher productivity of team members. And converting quotes into orders on confirmation with the possibility of outsourcing to a vendor can reduce significant time in the order fulfilment process.

Artwork Design and Approval Module

One area where customers get frustrated sometimes is finalizing the designs or depending on the designers for small changes. This affects customer experience and, at the same time, makes it more expensive for the printer to hire multiple designers. Artwork design module or designer studio solves the challenge of offering personalization to product offerings and lets your customers make changes on their own. You can also provide 100s of readymade templates to your customers to provide a base for the design.

Automating the design creation and approval process can reduce design-related communication substantially and significantly add to the benefits of a web to print storefront. It finally helps you provide your customer with product personalization which can increase the chance of repeat sales by many folds.

Order Processing Module

The biggest challenge printers face while managing orders manually or having separate systems to process the orders coming from different channels. Managing orders this way requires high human dependency leading to errors and delays in production. Also, job onboarding from multiple sales channels to the production system is time-consuming and manual. There is no quantifiable way to identify the productivity and reason for the delay in order processing.

Here, the importance of print order management software is colossal and outstanding. An automated order processing system gives you complete control to track every order from different sales channels. Print service providers can easily upload or push orders through API from multiple websites. On the order confirmation, the solution auto-generates invoices, job tickets, and shipping labels, submits orders into production, sends order updates, and integrates with third-party software for sales.

Workflow & Job Board Module

Those printers who are still not confident about what web to print is and how it can help accomplish the most brilliant print order management still use manual systems or MIS to manage orders. They don’t have a central dashboard to control the order fulfilment process. There is also no automated way to offer proactive order updates to customers.

The w2p-driven print order management system offers a workflow module to create separate workflows for different products. With the job board, the printer can internally track job tickets flowing through various departments. Additionally, it can warn printers of delayed processes and optimize workflow.

Vendor & Procurement Management Module

Customers want to work with a single printer and expect to have product offerings for all their needs. But it is only possible for the print providers to offer some of the products that their customers might ask for. Thus, it is critical that PSPs like you partner with the right vendors to increase their product offerings and seamlessly work with them to provide a low turnaround time for their print orders.

If you opt for OnPrintShop’s order management system, you can easily integrate with suppliers like APlus Printing, FireSprint, 4Over, Sina Lite, Promo Standard, Print.Com, and Drucerwerkdeal. This will help you quickly send orders to suppliers and pull order status to inform your customers. In addition, you can also set up your preferred vendors and ask for quotes, markup pricing, and rule-based outsourcing to send orders to vendors automatically.

Dashboard & Reports module

Reports are the key to being on top of your business and understanding your prime customers and products. As order management can manage all your orders centrally, you can easily categorize your customers, check the highest-selling products over all channels and verify which sales channels are performing well and which aren’t. You can also integrate third-party marketing tools to automate different marketing campaigns and increase your repeat sales.

Why is a Print Order Management System Necessary?

There are several benefits of a print order management system for any scale of print business, whether it is a start-up or enterprise. Order management software for small business can be easily customized according to the specific requirements, helping print SMEs achieve their business goals with perfection and precision. The software can be similarly customized for well-known print enterprises per their evolving needs. Below we have discussed the most attractive advantages of print order management system that printers like you swear by:

Multichannel Possibility

A typical printer like you uses multiple sales channels like walk-in, call, email, e-commerce, and third-party marketplace. Here, a digital OMS or order management system can effortlessly manage all of them with minimal human intervention and errors. The web-to-print driven order management software is well-known in the print industry now for offering an agile platform to process print orders online from different sales channels in one place.

Centralized Order Processing

Modern-day print order management system helps you centrally manage all your online and offline sales channels. This further leads you to offer consistent customer experience and grow repeat sales by reducing order management costs.

Check out how we helped Silverpoint Press reduce their idle time and centralize the order management process by implementing our award-winning w2p solution.

Data-Rich Dashboard and Reports

An automated print order management system provides centralized dashboards and reports that can help you digitally track the entire order management cycle. It provides critical business insights that let you make strategic decisions related to your business and allow you, as a printer, to understand your business growth in real-time.

Lowered Business Cost

PSPs like you often suffer from substantial business costs. And it is one of the most prominent print business challenges that w2p solves in the modern world, helping you grow your print business. Automating the order fulfilment tasks with a w2p-driven POMS leads to fewer human errors, eventually reducing running business costs. Also, as less labor is required to process print orders with order fulfilment software, it also lowers the overall business cost.

Fewer Operational Errors

Automating the print order fulfilment cycle leads you to fewer human touchpoints, reducing the chances of human errors. Also, an apt order management system keeps track of all conversations in your workflow, leading to less communication gaps and errors.

Happy Customers

With a practical and intelligent order management system, you can provide constant updates related to their orders to customers, indeed a modern customer experience. Isn’t it? Also, if you opt for an OMS steered by a web to print software, you can offer your customers the possibility of order personalization. It leads to astounding customer satisfaction and a high chance of repeat orders.

Labor Shortage Solution

An automated print order management system can help you reduce the significant workforce required to manage orders manually. So, you don’t have to bear the disturbing consequences of the labor shortage problem. By automating repetitive tasks like estimation, artwork design and approval, order entry, & invoicing, and payment, you can significantly boost your productivity and reduce human dependency. This further helps with faster job processing with less staff, enhancing sales and revenue.

Take a sneak peek into how we helped a signage printing company boost its revenue by 600% in 3 years by cutting down on its human labor needs and turnaround time.

Increased Productivity

With an excellent print order management system, printers like you can process print jobs with lesser errors and lower turnaround time, significantly decreasing the order processing time. Also, you can process more print jobs with fewer people, leading to higher team productivity. In the long run, this helps you increase your overall business productivity by many folds.

APlus Printing leveraged our top-notch w2p-centric POMS for end-to-end integration, increasing productivity and 300% growth.

Tremendous Business Growth

Optimizing your current order fulfilment process with an order management system software increases your business immensely. Your key people can focus on growth rather than fulfilling the print jobs, as they are taken care of automatically.Using our innovative print order management system will come with extra capabilities like a vendor management module and third-party integration with suppliers like 4Over and Sina Printing. This will help you sell new products and outsource them quickly. Also, tapping into new sales channels or markets and launching retail, reseller, & B2B stores will become super-easy for you.

Unleash the Power of Seamless Print Order Management with OnPrintShop

OnPrintShop’s automated and next-gen print order management software has been the key for global PSPs over a decade to work smartly and grow sales. It consistently helps our clients free their core people from most routine operations, ultimately reducing human dependency and errors. They further focus on the business strategy and brainstorm innovative ways to boost revenue.

The biggest USPs of our online order management system are:

• It allows sharing estimations within minutes to increase customer conversions
• It can centrally oversee all orders regardless of the sales channel
• It assures 100% automated order processing to reduce cost and increase productivity
• It helps centrally manage customer data to provide an excellent omnichannel experience

Once you set up, our POMS will help automate your entire order fulfillment cycle, starting from estimation to ending on order delivery. This will eventually provide you the flexibility to adapt quickly to new opportunities by setting up new products, customers, and channels or collaborating with vendors.

So, what are you waiting for?

Get started with us now!