3 Ways Purple Dot Removes Manual Work From Pre-Order Operations

First you have to configure your store and set up your products. That means creating variants, pre-order badges, and checkout notes. Then comes the payments decision. Will you authorize now or charge later? Customer communications, such as confirmations and delay notices, are a must. So are reporting and compliance reviews.

Without easy pre-order operations, this is a highly manual process. Depending on your product catalog and internal resources, it can take two days or even two weeks.

Before working with Purple Dot, Oh Polly used to avoid pre-orders unless they were absolutely necessary because of all the manual work from different teams. Within one year of working with Purple Dot, Oh Polly increased pre-order GMV by 72%.

‍That’s because our pre-commerce platform makes pre-orders easy. Read on to learn more about three features we built to reduce your manual work (and headaches).

Know your operations will run smoothly with automated fulfillment

Purple Dot’s pre-commerce platform seamlessly integrates with your eCommerce platform, warehouse management system, and third-party logistics company. This powers our automated fulfillment feature, which saves you an enormous amount of time and aggravation.

We hold orders outside these systems until the inventory arrives at the warehouse. At the same time, we automatically monitor your stock levels. 

Once inventory has arrived at the warehouse, we push pre-orders downstream. That way, your warehouse team isn’t on a wild goose chase, looking to fulfill orders with stock that isn’t there. You can also schedule when we push orders downstream if you’d like them to arrive at particular times of the day.

Start running pre-orders in seconds with PO upload

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Manually uploading lists of pre-order products can be time-consuming. As you work through the lists, products stay “sold out” on the website longer than necessary, which means you can’t sell them.

Our PO upload feature enables pre-ordering for a list of SKUs in seconds. Once you upload your purchase order document, the AI model automatically scans it. Because we integrate with your eCommerce store, SKUs are then matched against those you have in stock.

This is a particularly valuable time-saver if your products have a lot of variants. Think about a pair of shoes that comes in a dozen sizes, not to mention different widths. As different variants sell out, they will also automatically flip to “pre-order” status.

PO upload prepares a list of items. Once you review and edit — changing shipping dates, for example — you can push it live and start capturing additional sales.

‍Keep customers up to date at every step with automated emails

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‍Clear communications go a long way for building trust and confidence, which drives repeat business. We know that’s easier said than done. Nearly every retailer has experienced supply chain issues and sometimes shipment delays happen. Pre-order regulations in the U.S. and the U.K. mandate that you let customers know about delays as soon as possible.

This may involve spending hours manually pulling lists of pre-order customers and sending them updates. We automatically deploy those email as soon as you update your estimated shipping date. We also send order and cancellation confirmations, ready-to-ship and refund notifications, and CSAT emails.

Recently, we’ve made this even easier to keep track of. The view in our pre-commerce platform now includes both “overdue” and “due soon” tabs. These tabs highlight which pre-orders need their estimated shipping dates updated.

Looking to take the manual work out of your pre-order operations? We'd love to help. Get in touch at hello@getpurpledot.com

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