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Drop Shipping with aroma®

Flexible Assortment Expansion in up to 24H Feasible

The cost of storing goods is a key success factor for retailers: Making a wide range of goods available to customers at all times can be expensive. Instead of storing large, bulky items, seasonal products or goods with low sales volumes, retailers are now able to work with third party suppliers, known as drop shippers: In this scenario the manufacturer of the product that has been ordered, acting as a drop shipper, delivers it directly to the customer. This enables retailers to expand their range of goods, while reducing their internal efforts, lowering storage and delivery costs, and minimizing capital outlay.

The Simple Approach to Staying Connected with the Drop Shipper

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Drop shipping is a particular challenge in Omni-channel sales: orders need to be taken across all analogue and digital channels, including the online shop, apps, direct marketing, catalogues, stores, market places and so on. All orders need to be synchronized and processed in the same way. The drop shipper module of an Order Management System can help with this challenge:

Web based

Once they have created an account and imported their product catalogue, the drop shipper uses a browser to access the retailer’s system. This simplicity means that it is perfectly possible to integrate a new drop shipper in under a day. Manual web-based access is ideal for suppliers with a light to medium order load, and who do not want to integrate their IT systems with those of the retailer.

Integrated

With larger volumes of orders a direct integration between the retailer’s Order Management System and the drop shipper’s IT systems is recommended: using a range of interface technologies, it is simple to integrate an OMS into the drop shipper’s system environment so that orders can be transmitted directly.

Staying in Control of All Processes

After retailers have defined their dropshipping partners in the Order Management System, all further processes run completely automatically: When an order is received, the system recognizes which products are supplied by the retailer itself and which goods are supplied by the dropshipper. Completely unnoticed by the customer, the Order Management System splits the orders into separate delivery orders - regardless of which sales channel they come from. Thanks to complete process integration, retailers do not have to worry about losing control over fulfillment - quite the opposite, the processes stay:

Up to the minute

So as to avoid supplier bottlenecks, drop shippers can keep their system fully updated on the availability of each individual product.

Corporate design compliant

The Order Management System creates all the relevant documents for the drop shipper to supply the goods, including invoices, delivery notes, return stickers – all using the retailer’s corporate design.

Secure

The retailer can control and manage all processes within an Order Management System so keeping full control at all times.

Reliable

As part of the process definition and layout phase, the retailer defines customer communication policies. The OMS then keeps customers automatically informed on the status, progress and delivery of their order.

Professional

The drop shipper accepts returns directly in the OMS and processes them from there, including sending the return label and automated customer communications.

Simply Explained: Drop Shipping with aroma®

Benefits for You, the Retailer

Drop shippers can be added quickly and simply – An Order Management System provides the perfect environment for efficient drop shipping.
Integrate drop shippers seamlessly into your processes – while always staying in control of your business.
Use Omni-Channel commerce to sell your goods, regardless of sales channels and backend systems in place.
Expand and update your range of goods as and when you need to.
Sell large and bulky items more inexpensively, so reducing capital outlay. Save on storage and delivery costs.
Reduce internal efforts – your suppliers will co-ordinate delivery.

Deep Dive

White paper: Headless Commerce for Retail

For stronger customer loyalty: Headless commerce offers new approaches to mastering the complexity of Omnichannel commerce and deploying high-performance services.

Guide: Omnichannel IT Architecture

Benefit from the opportunities of digitization by making your IT architecture fit for the future.

Whitepaper: Omnichannel Order Management

These best practices help retailers overcome their Omnichannel Order Management challenges.

Whitepaper: Omnichannel means Omni-Convenience

Want to be where your customer is? Optimize your omnichannel strategy now and increase your customer satisfaction.

Demo: Take a look at aroma®

Our free demo gives you exclusive insights into the look and feel of our Order Management System.

Omnichannel: Terms & Definitions

Which are the different channels? What does resilience mean in retail? Which concepts are described by terms such as Click and Collect, BOPIL, ROPIS or Endless Aisle?

Consulting: Omnichannel Quick Check

Our Arvato Systems Omnichannel experts help you realize the full potential of your Omnichannel strategy.

Further functions and modules of aroma®

Extensive functions for optimal control of the omni-channel, delivery and financial processes. The DOM contains extensive business logic.

  • Financial Processes

    In addition to the physical processes, financial processes are also managed in Distributed Order Management (DOM) with regard to customer orders. These processes sometimes differ considerably depending on the payment method, country concerned and tax rates. aroma® supports these processes internationally. For this purpose, all prices and tax statements are kept in the system for the articles and orders.

    On this basis, the system generates the data records for the connected financial systems and, if required, also necessary documents such as invoices. Changes to VAT rates - e.g. 2020 in Germany within the scope of measures during the corona situation - are easily configurable in aroma®. Various payment options including ordering on account or mixed payment methods from credit cards and bonus points can also be mapped.

    As the system keeps all relevant financial information available, it is also possible to calculate in the system what amount is to be paid out to a customer for returns. Less powerful systems always fall back on the shop system - this causes unnecessary data traffic and often problems in customer service. Only when the relevant financial information is available in Order Management, as is the case with aroma®, can customer service staff also provide comprehensive information on financial topics.

  • Drop Shipping

    Many retailers work with so-called dropshippers, i.e. partners who keep articles in their own warehouse and forward them to the orders for these articles. The forwarding of orders to business partners is comparatively simple. It is also important and more challenging to support the business partners in processing the order. To do this, the partners need an easy-to-use system that they can use from a standing start without any installation or preparation. Arvato Systems provides the Drop Ship module from aroma® for this purpose. Orders can of course also be transmitted to business partners simply via interface.

  • Customer Service

    E-commerce and omni-channel processes always cause a lot of work when unplanned events occur, such as

    • an article that a customer has ordered is not available
    • an invoice from a customer is not paid at all or only partially paid
    • an incorrect article was delivered and the customer now wants a replacement article
    • a delivery takes longer than planned
    • a customer makes a chargeback, etc.

    Therefore one of the most important tasks of a Distributed Order Management System is to support these service processes. Arvato Systems has developed and optimised aroma® over many years on the basis of practical experience and thus helps to optimise service processes and implement them cost-effectively.

  • Business Process Management


    Business processes in omni-channel business are often long and complex. Our order management system aroma® simplifies the documentation, visualisation and modification of processes via an integrated business process management component. This gives our customers an excellent overview of the business processes and allows them to change them very easily at designated points.



    aroma® supports 2 types of process management:

    1. Simpler processes can be configured directly in aroma®.
    2. In addition, aroma works with a BPMN engine which can be used to create typical BPMN diagrams and modify processes at designated points directly in the BPMN tool (activity designer).


    This offers you clear advantages:

    • optimal overview of e-commerce and omni-channel process chains
    • simple and quick changes to the process chains at designated points
    • helpful documentation of the process chains
    • easier onboarding of new employees and partners
    • Efficiency increase and cost reduction in process management
  • Prices & Promotions

    As a retailer, you offer your articles today on many different channels, such as your own online shop and in the shops. Historically, different systems for maintaining and managing prices and promotions were often used for the different channels - this made administration slow, costly, and error-prone.

    We have developed the aroma® Price & Promotions module for the simple, fast, and central administration of prices and promotions across all channels.

    In addition, the module functions as a "historical memory", where all historical prices and promotions are stored. Based on predefined rules, the correct refund amount is calculated for the customer in case of returns.

    Your advantages as a retailer:

    • Profit from a highly efficient price and promotion module
    • Simplifying the management of prizes and promotions 
    • Unification across all sales channels possible
    • Optimisation of return payments, avoiding unnecessary high payouts
    • Reduction of operational costs in the management of prices and promotions
  • Administration

    With the powerful aroma® administration console you make yourself independent of service providers and increase your flexibility at reduced costs - your team takes over the typical admin tasks of e-commerce and omni-channel operations.


    Your benefits:

    • Reduction of operational costs for the management of operative processes
    • Empowering your own team
    • Reduction of dependence on IT service providers and reduction of corresponding costs
    • high flexibility in the control of the omni-processes
    • Very good overview of all processes and configurations
    • clear reporting, monitoring and alerting
    • better customer service at lower costs and increased team satisfaction
  • Reporting & Analysis

    The control and optimization of the delivery, finance and service processes is based on extensive data collection, reporting and analysis. aroma® provides comprehensive reports on the status of the business. In addition, running processes are automatically monitored in the background, anomalies are detected and processes are escalated if necessary.

    Examples of available reports:

    • Sales reports: summary or per article group incl. drill down on articles / various analyses (e.g. slow seller, top seller, ...)
    • Overview of incoming orders with analysis options according to various dimensions
    • currently processed orders incl. analyses according to order status
    • Customer reports and analyses (e.g. top customers, customers who return a lot, customers with numerous contacts in customer service ...)
    • Cancellations and returns, report on allocated goodwill credits
    • Report on stocks (e.g. total stock, reserved stock, expected stock, date of update of stocks, location of stocks, analysis of stocks by different types of stock such as "physical items versus licences")
    • Financial reports according to various dimensions and levels of aggregation, for example by item, currency, region, time, net sales, gross sales, etc.

    Reports can be filtered according to numerous criteria and contain aggregations / analyses for a quick overview. All reports can of course be exported in standard formats.