Cloud retail can transform your business, no matter what its size. If you’re running a small to medium-sized retail company, you are all too familiar with the challenges: a tough economy, changing shopping patterns, more competition and higher costs.

Even large, well-established retail businesses like John Lewis, a chain of successful department stores operating throughout Great Britain, are embracing the cloud as a way of keeping up with the ever changing retail market.

Cloud retail services can handle the entire back-end process of a retail operation, including order processing, inventory management, fulfillment and shipping. Let’s explore the three benefits of order management in the cloud.

Cloud Retail Business Success

Managing Inventory

One way cloud services use data to make the retail industry more efficient is through enhanced inventory, writes Marcia Kaplan of Practical Ecommerce. More than just keeping track of when its time to restock, enhanced inventory management looks at eliminating slow moving merchandise in your inventory while increasing the amount of faster selling merchandise.

By selling through multiple channels, you can increase sales and reach a wider audience. But you will also need to be able to track inventory across all channels, such as a Web store, as well as Amazon, popular third-party e-commerce software such as Magento, offsite fulfillment centers and other shopping channels.

Cloud inventory management avoids the problem of too much inventory on hand and too few orders coming in. Excessive inventory ties up cash that you could have invested into other areas of the business to help drive additional revenue. At the same time, not having enough inventory on hand results in backorders, cancellations, negative social buzz and, potentially, lost customers.

The cloud can help you to adapt in near real-time to inventory fluctuations, keeping each channel running smoothly.

Improving Marketing

Large cloud providers like Amazon are transforming the retail industry by providing cloud services that can drastically improve the way you collect data and use it for marketing to your customers. These kinds of services were once available only to companies large enough to invest in their own software.

Marketing to your existing customer base provides a big opportunity to grow your business. Your customer list is one of your most valuable assets, and you can unleash its value by doing the following:

• Segmenting the customer base to compare and contrast purchasing behavior.
• Tracking results of specific campaigns and promotion programs.
• Generating lists of customers by specific categories to integrate with your email marketing system.

The cloud provides an easy way to integrate your marketing efforts across all sales channels and customer profiles. It does so by tying the back-office to the front-office, improving how and where you can utilize sometimes limited resources to help grow your business.

Delivering Customer Service

You are probably aware that it costs five times more to earn a new customer than to retain an existing one. Whether customers interact with you over the phone or online, delivering excellent customer service is a key ingredient in developing and nurturing customer satisfaction and retention, and ultimately repeat business through loyalty.

Cloud computing has revolutionized customer service and support, allowing you to answer critical questions that will help you keep customers longer and keep them satisfied.

There are three questions you should be able to answer about your ability to provide top customer service:

• Does my business have the tools to provide visibility into my customers’ orders across all channels?
• Does my business have a customer service team in place that can use these tools to quickly respond to customer inquiries and engage them?
• Do I have the ability to view the status of an order online, or am I able to access information in real-time?

It only takes one poor customer experience to produce countless lost customers due to negative reviews and posts online.

Conclusion

Cloud retail means managing fulfillment requests and inventory levels in a new way. By leveraging the cloud, you can gain real-time, actionable insight into the details of your business. This insight translates to growth and increased efficiency, and can help you capitalize on opportunity.

Cloud Photo via Shutterstock

The post Cloud Retail Brings Your Business Success appeared first on Small Business Trends.

While The National Federation of Independent Business’ recent report on small business owners’ optimism for the coming year was disheartening, recent trends and the success of Small Business Saturday should give us hope.

Small businesses remain at the heart of the U.S. economy and are poised to drive significant growth in 2013. There are approximately 23 million small businesses in America, which account for 54 percent of U.S. sales, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and that number will continue to grow.

Hiring at large organizations has remained stagnant, driving more experienced people to leave the corporate world and start their own small businesses, and in turn hiring more employees. In fact, small businesses have provided 55 percent of all jobs and 66 percent of all net new jobs since the 1970′s.

Small Business Saturday, which took place on November 24th, proved that consumers are willing to buy from local merchants. Consumers spent $5.5 billion at participating independent retailers, surpassing estimates of $5.3 billion, according to the National Federation of Independent Business and American Express. American Express reported that transactions at small business merchants increased approximately 21 percent compared to last year.

The U.S. government has recognized the value of Small Business Saturday as well, with elected officials in all 50 states as well as President Obama voicing their support. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a Small Business Saturday Resolution supporting efforts to encourage consumers to shop small, and to raise awareness of the importance of small businesses.

Additionally, U.S. small businesses are now emerging as global players. They are leveraging eCommerce technology and social media to connect with new customers around the world. And, according to a survey conducted by Interactive Media in Retail Group, global eCommerce sales are expected to surpass $1.25 trillion in 2013.

Even in an uncertain economic climate, it’s reassuring to see the recent success of small businesses. If the government and consumers both in the U.S. and around the world continue the recent trend of supporting local businesses, we’ll see in 2013 that small really can be mighty.

Girl self-employed in flower shop Photo via Shutterstock

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A recent survey about holiday shopping trends by PriceGrabber found that 88 percent of respondents plan to research their holiday gift purchases in advance to find the best deals. Of those respondents, 38 percent plan to spend three to six hours researching holiday gift purchases online.

That means that, even if a customer visits your website, chances are they’ve visited many others as well. After working with more than 10,000 small to medium-sized merchants over the years, I’ve put together the following list of best practice tips to help you turn your website visitors into customers.

Design Promotions

It is important to design promotions that are consistent with and enhance the company’s brand’s image. Take time to review the success or failure of each promotion to determine the value and focus of future promotions.

Whether it’s free shipping, rewards programs, or special offers, sales incentives are necessary to compete.

Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping can be one of the best incentives offered by eCommerce retailers to increase online sales. The PriceGrabber survey found that 77 percent of respondents indicated that free shipping incentives will entice them to make purchases.  A great first step in offering free shipping is joining the more than 1,000 merchants participating in Free Shipping Day 2012, taking place December 17th.

Other incentive options include offering online coupons or partnering with a vendor to provide third-party authentication of your site. As a best practice, retailers drive the most sales with free shipping when they require a minimum purchase.

Prevent Shopping Cart Abandonment

Even after a potential customer has selected an item and added it to their shopping cart, that doesn’t mean the sale is complete.  A 2010 report by Forrester Research that surveyed online customers found that 88 percent have abandoned their online shopping carts without completing a transaction.

Simple things like making your website less noisy or switching your shopping cart model can make a huge difference.

By designing targeted promotions, offering free shipping and taking proactive steps to prevent shopping cart abandonment, you can ensure that you turn your website visitors into buyers and are able to take full advantage of the holiday sales season.

Online Shoppers Photo via Shutterstock

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