How to Manage Bulk Orders & Customization in Printing Businesses

Summary: Are you finding it difficult to manage bulk orders while still offering highly personalized prints to your print buyers? Utilizing a powerful order management system can be a game-changer in dealing with this issue. From handling the complexities involved in managing bulk orders to providing effortless customization, the OMS system can help with all. Read on to explore how.

Buying bulk print orders is a popular practice among many industries, including retail & e-commerce, education, food & hospitality, real estate, advertising, and marketing.

In fact, research states that bulk ordering is highly profitable for customers as it can help them to save up to 20-83% of their overall purchasing cost.

Since the demand for bulk orders is higher, it's a great opportunity for print businesses to grow in this sector. But wait! It isn't that easy. The major challenge is in providing these orders as per the unique customization requirements of customers.

Don't worry! For print businesses adopting an automation-driven system, customizing large-quantity orders is a piece of cake. It can help you to effortlessly process a large volume of orders and meet specific customization requirements efficiently.

In this blog, we will delve into how an innovative print order management system enables print business owners to manage bulk orders and customization like a pro! Let's begin.

What Are the Challenges Faced by Printers when Handling Bulk Purchases?

Although offering high-quantity orders can be easy and profitable, printers go through certain challenges when offering them. Let us discover some of these must-know challenges.

Issues in Scalability when Handling Wholesale Orders

The most common challenge that occurs when managing wholesale orders is the inability to scale as per the huge demand for prints. As the demand increases, printers find it challenging to meet strict deadlines, manage inventory levels, deal with ineffective pricing strategies, and ensure customer satisfaction.

High Design Customization Requirements

Without a robust web-to-print online designer, print businesses may find it complex to ensure that each order is personalized as per unique customer preferences like color, size, and type. Maintaining brand consistency across prints is equally important, as any error in designs may lead to the wastage of time and valuable resources.

Maintaining Quality Control of High-Quantity Orders

When dealing with these types of orders, printers find it challenging to maintain consistent quality across products and detect inaccuracies in prints. Traditional systems make it a tedious task to ensure each product meets the required standards with appropriate color, resolution, and material quantity.

Production Bottlenecks Affecting Turnaround Times

Printers face challenges like overloading of equipment & production lines, causing frequent breakdowns and delays in generating print output. Also, coordination issues between different production stages, like designing, printing, finishing, and packaging, can result in slower turnaround times.

Print Order Fulfillment and Logistics

Large-scale distribution requires a powerful print fulfillment software to manage logistics and fulfillment operations, while preventing errors and delays in order delivery. These operations include managing inventory levels, coordinating with multiple shipping carriers, consolidating orders to minimize costs, distributing them to multiple locations, and tracking the status of orders.

What Are the Limitations of Traditional Order Management Methods?

Traditional or outdated order management methods have certain limitations that hinder the print business productivity. Let’s discuss what these include -

Manual Print Order Processing Issues

Since manual order processing does not have a centralized system, it causes several complexities when handling large print quantities.

Operations like order management, resource allocation, quality control, secure packaging, shipment, and order tracking become tedious without an automated system in place.

Moreover, the manual print order processes involved in traditional order management methods are time-consuming, prone to significant errors, and can result in poor customer experiences.

Challenges in Design Customization Management

Print businesses utilizing a traditional approach do not have an automated system, and hence they have to customize the designs of these bulk purchases one by one.

This process is not only repetitive but can also require significant time from your staff, which could otherwise be spent on more critical tasks.

Since print businesses rely on manual work and lack a system to track each customer’s specific design needs, they have limitations in meeting the custom design requests of customers.

Key Features of an OMS System for Managing Bulk Orders and Customization

If you are considering opting for a print shop order management software that can help you handle high-quantity orders and offer advanced customization to your customers, then this section is a must-read for you.

Bulk Ordering & Product Personalization Tool

Search for a good print order management system and choose the right one that supports handling of large print order quantities while still enabling product personalization for your customers. Consider a robust system that can help you automate the customization of each printed product, maintain consistency across all items, and ensure adherence to the client's branding requirements.

Centralized Digital Asset Management & Version Control

The second most important feature in a print management software is modern digital asset management that handles digital files such as images and templates via centralized storage. Also, version control of design files, permission & access control, and a user-friendly interface to upload can help printers to further utilize the digital files for printing.

Advanced Design Templates & Typesetting Management

Mass personalization of templates and typesetting management are a must-have feature in a software built for wholesale order management. These functionalities can simplify data inputting for customers, automate the typesetting process, and enable the personalization of multiple templates at once, thus increasing the convenience of designing high-quantity orders.

Tools for Seamlessly Managing the Bulk Pricing of Products

Consider a system that allows printers to manage or update the cost of prints that customers purchase in bulk quantities, enabling you to save time. Look for features like a filter option to set the prices of products based on aspects like category, quantity, and increase/decrease of a fixed value or percentage.

Benefits of Implementing a Bulk Order Management Software for Printers

Implementing an order management software for a printshop is necessary due to the numerous benefits it offers. Let’s know the top three benefits this implementation offers for printers. Also, let’s discover how exactly it helps them to serve customers who demand large-scale orders with unique personalization.

Improved Operational Efficiency of Print Business

New age printers can utilize an automation-driven OMS system to streamline the processing of a large volume of orders. With the system’s capability to centralize data and operations, print businesses can maintain consistency across all prints, reduce manual errors, achieve faster turnaround times, and optimize overall operational efficiency.

Enhanced Customer Experience and Satisfaction

An innovative system can enhance the online ordering experience for your customers by letting them track the status of bulk purchases, enabling you to offer personalized communications based on their online activities, and providing excellent customer support. By offering real-time order tracking and access to order history, the system provides your customers with transparency on order details, thus enhancing customer loyalty.

Automated Inventory and Workflow Management

A scalable workflow automation software with wholesale order management capabilities can help print business owners automate their print workflow from start to end, manage inventory levels effectively, and get detailed analytics of each order. This functionality will enable them to automate order routing & processing, get complete visibility into inventory levels, view actionable data for identifying trends, and make better business decisions.

How an OMS Streamlines the Handling of High-Quantity Orders & Customization?

Implementing an order automation software can streamline the handling of large-quantity orders and optimize business productivity. Let’s know how to manage bulk purchases with an order management system.

Automated Processing of Bulk Orders

It automates the entire order processing workflow from start to finish by enabling print businesses to work simultaneously on multiple orders through a centralized platform.
This print order management software supports scalability by enabling printers to manage large-quantity orders from multiple sales channels, eliminating the risk of errors, and ensuring quick order processing.

AI-Driven Design Customization Capabilities

The print management system streamlines the customization of high-quantity orders with its intelligent AI capabilities, enabling print businesses to instantly generate product content, and images that cater to customers' demands.

The advanced functionalities in this automation-powered system for storing customer preferences, offering customers pre-designed templates, background removing capability, and options for adding text or images further simplify the print designing process.

Bulk Orders Scheduling and Prioritization

A robust OMS system simplifies the process of scheduling high-quantity orders, prioritizing their production based on their deadlines, urgency levels, and complexity.

This automation-powered capability reduces the hassle of missed deadlines, enabling print businesses to allocate their resources effectively, minimize delays in production, and achieve faster turnaround times.

Split Shipping of Bulk Orders to Multiple Locations

Print businesses can utilize this modern system to allow split shipping of high-quantity orders for corporate clients and franchises, providing flexibility of quantity and locations.

The ship to multiple addresses capability is necessary for printers as it allows your clients to divide their wholesale orders containing marketing materials or other print products into multiple shipments and choose them to be delivered to multiple locations of their choice.

Real-Time Tracking and Reporting of Orders

Although tracking a large volume of orders can be quite challenging, the right tools and strategies can help print businesses make informed decisions, ensure timely order delivery, and achieve satisfied customers.

Utilizing a print tracking software with functionalities like providing unique tracking numbers for each order and a unified dashboard for showcasing the status of orders can simplify complicated data and present it in the form of reports for effortless tracking.

Success Story of a Print Company Using an Order Management System

A client of OnPrintShop, Best Printing USA achieved a 130% increase in online orders & sales, and an 80% reduction in manual order management.

OnPrintShop offered an order management system for the print company to easily manage bulk orders and offer high-end design personalization to their customers.

OnPrintShop transformed the operations of Best Printing USA by boosting orders & sales, reducing human dependency in order management, enhancing customer experience, and optimizing cost-efficiency for each order.

Wrapping it Up!In the highly competitive printing industry, adopting a cutting-edge order management software for printers is a smart business move.Furthermore, web to print provider like OnPrintShop enables printers to get a 360-degree view of their orders, streamline the processing of bulk orders, and offer next-level customization capability for customers.If you are a print business owner looking for a systematic approach to offer large-scale orders with customizations, now's the time to take action! Go ahead and schedule a demo with OnPrintShop today to see the difference for yourself!