Recent Articles
Top Challenges in Supply Chain Management for Online Stores
Supply chain management is the backbone of any successful eCommerce business. However, managing it effectively—especially at scale—is no easy task. From inventory shortages to fulfillment delays, online retailers face a variety of challenges that can impact their profitability and customer satisfaction. For businesses selling a large number of products across multiple sales channels, like those using Freestyle Software’s Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.), streamlining operations is a priority. Understanding these common supply chain issues can help eCommerce businesses navigate obstacles and maintain efficiency.
Fast Shipping, Lower Costs: Solving the Biggest Fulfillment Challenges for High-Volume eCommerce
For high-volume eCommerce businesses, fulfillment is a balancing act between speed, accuracy and cost efficiency. With rising customer expectations for fast shipping—often within two days or less—alongside increasing carrier fees, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, managing fulfillment can feel like an uphill battle. If your fulfillment process is slowing down operations or eating into your margins, you’re not alone. Below, we’ll explore the biggest fulfillment challenges eCommerce businesses face and strategies to overcome them.
What is an Order Management System? A Complete Guide
In today’s competitive eCommerce landscape, businesses must efficiently manage orders, inventory, and fulfillment processes to meet customer expectations. An order management system (OMS) is a crucial tool that streamlines eCommerce fulfillment, enhances inventory tracking, and improves overall operational efficiency. This guide explores OMS benefits and how a modern OMS can transform your business.
How to Reduce Shipping Costs for Your Online Store
Shipping costs can be a major challenge for online businesses, especially those managing large inventories and striving for growth. For Freestyle Software clients using M.O.M. (Multichannel Order Management), reducing these costs can be a game-changer. In this blog, we’ll explore actionable strategies to help streamline shipping expenses while maintaining excellent customer service. 1. Optimize Your Packaging Using the right-sized packaging can significantly cut shipping costs. Oversized boxes result in higher dimensional weight charges, even for lightweight items. Here’s what you can do: Right-Size Packaging: Choose boxes that closely match the dimensions of your products. Use Lightweight Materials: Opt for eco-friendly, lightweight packing materials to save on weight-based fees. Invest in Custom Packaging: If you frequently ship specific items, custom packaging tailored to their dimensions can save both money and material. Cartonization (Packing Virtualization) Enhancements: Packaging Virtualization now allows merchants to configure Box definition by providing options to allow exact dimension match and control the percentage of padding in each box. In addition, virtualize box view now provides hover over labels for each item in the box. This enhancement further streamlines
QUIZ: What Do You Hate the Most about Online Returns?
As we settle into the new year, are you struggling to keep up with your holiday returns? Most eCommerce managers are ready to take a break after the Q4 order madness has started to tamper down in January. However, as trends like bracketing--when shoppers buy multiple sizes or colors and then return all but one--can make January a real struggle for eCommerce companies and their employees, who are already worn out from working extra hours during the holidays. We created an online poll for both eCommerce managers and online shoppers to provide their feedback about the challenges, benefits and insight they want to share about juggling online returns. Provide your feedback in our "What Drives You Crazy About Online Returns" online poll. We will be compiling this insight and sharing it in future blog posts. Let us know what you think and what can make your online return process easier and less challenging next year.
How Cloud Hosting Simplifies High-Volume eCommerce Management
For high-volume eCommerce businesses, managing day-to-day operations often feels like spinning a dozen plates at once. From processing orders and tracking inventory to scaling for peak seasons, operational complexity can lead to inefficiencies, frustrated customers, and unnecessary costs. These pain points are amplified for companies still relying on on-premise hosting solutions. The good news? Cloud hosting offers a path to simplicity and scalability tailored to your business needs. Common Challenges Faced by High-Volume eCommerce Companies Scalability Issues: Rapid growth or seasonal spikes often overwhelm on-premise systems, leading to crashes, delays, and unhappy customers. Data Security Concerns: On-premise environments may lack advanced security measures, putting sensitive customer and business data at risk. Limited Accessibility: When your infrastructure is tied to a physical location, remote work or accessing data from multiple locations becomes cumbersome. High IT Costs: Maintaining on-premise servers requires significant investment in hardware, updates, and IT staff. Operational Downtime: Aging infrastructure or server failures can bring operations to a halt, costing businesses thousands of dollars. How Cloud Hosting Addresses These Pain Points Cloud hosting is more than just a trendy