Bottom Line Up Front: Labor and supply chain shortages are major issues for companies nationwide right now. You can navigate some of these challenges with InkSoft’s order management tools and control how you take care of your customers.
Your business is feeling the effects of a whirlwind year. Hopefully, your shop saw a flood of business from traditional customers””school sports teams, local organizations, and corporate clients. But now, we may face more significant challenges. 2022 is right around the corner, so it’s time to consider how to meet these challenges head-on and keep printing as steadily and efficiently as possible.
Short on everything
First, there’s the pinch of the labor shortage. As of third-quarter 2021, some studies are finding more than 47% of businesses are reporting a shortage of skilled workers. Whether you’re printing shirts, mugs, hats, or embroidered polos, you know that selling and printing custom-branded merch requires a learning curve. If you can’t get the right people in the door to sell, pack, and print orders, it’s challenging to attract new customers or retain old ones, for that matter.
And if that’s not enough, there’s the supply chain shortages. Early on, those shortages were in products not as connected to our industry, like consumer electronics and automotive-related goods. But now, it’s crossed over into the apparel and promo world, which presents significant challenges ahead for our industry.
Focus on what you can control
While we can’t fix these bigger global problems, there are some solutions. For starters, you can take a closer look at how you run your print business and see if there is room for improvement.
Regardless of your size and niche, one area that could probably use improvements is your order management process. Think for a second about these items:
- Are you still using paper order forms? Or similarly, instructing your customers to print out an order form and fill it out?
- Does communication in your shop require walking from department to department to relay messages to each team member?
- Are you leaving post-It notes around the shop to communicate changes on customer orders to your staff?
- What’s your job approval system like? How many endless email threads do you have where you’re still waiting for a client to approve a job quote? And, there’s no telling if they’ve even opened the attachment with the art file for review yet.
Here’s where InkSoft can help.
Use InkSoft for your front and back office.
Let’s say that one of your current challenges is that your front desk person is also now part of your shipping team. They’re answering phones and responding to emails for half the day, but now they’re also helping pack boxes to ship out orders the second half of the day. Previously, you might’ve had the budget to let them punch in customer order details all day long and eventually hand it off to your production team. Now, you don’t have that luxury.
Multitask the right way
That employee can split up their day by inputting orders into the InkSoft platform first, then moving on to helping with the shipping and order finalization for jobs already printed. InkSoft’s order manager gives them handy tools like searchable tags, so it’s easier to find specific customers faster. They can sort orders by categories like “ready to ship” and “ready to pick up” for easy organizing. And, your team can also filter your customer orders by “Open,” “Completed,” and “canceled” so you can find which jobs need to be completed ASAP.
Bulk controls to make the order management process easier
Save time with your small staff with the bulk actions feature for customer orders, too. The interface allows you to select multiple customer orders at a time to take care of crucial order management tasks like printing multiple receipts and sending information to accounting software.
Get customer information for orders faster
InkSoft creates a new customer profile and logs activity inside the platform, so you don’t have to spend as much time building a new profile. InkSoft will create a new customer whether they’re purchasing through Online Stores, the Online Designer, or any invoices or sales presentations you create with the platform.
These features all ensure that you can stay on top of order management and do not lose track of order statuses, even if you don’t have a large staff to split the workload.
Keeping track of quantities
None of us can control supply chain shortages. But something you CAN do with InkSoft is update your orders efficiently and quickly to adapt to change. For example, if a particular shirt style or size is on backorder, InkSoft handles that change management. Your team members can simply go back into that existing order and change quantities on the order to reflect what’s currently available. If you need to substitute a different shirt or other product, you can also update those details.
In the rare event you need to cancel and refund a customer because you can’t get the item in time, InkSoft makes that process straightforward. It’s never ideal to cancel an order and should be the last resort. Still, the sooner you’re able to resolve a refund, the more likely you’ll have that customer come back when you can fill their order with the desired product.
And with any significant changes you need to make to a customer order regarding style, size, colors, or other items, you can share notes with your team inside the platform, so there isn’t any confusion.
A well-oiled machine
Dealing with supply chain shortages and smaller workforces is stressful. But if you use InkSoft’s order manager, you can stay on top of your business and serve your customers. And with a fluid communication system for your team, you’ll cut down on order misprints or the need to re-do a job. Because let’s face it, with the current conditions, the less you have to tap into your inventory to start over or add more hours to your labor clock with a smaller crew, the better.
Ready to take on 2022 with a well-oiled machine and see how InkSoft can help your business? Sign up here to book a personalized tour today.
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