Did you know that online order-taking comes as standard with Cybake?
Did you know manufacturing bakeries that sell their products on a wholesale basis get their own online ordering portal with Cybake as standard?
In fact, we first introduced online order-taking for wholesale bakeries seven years ago, in 2017.
Back then, services like Shopify and Wix had emerged to make online business for retail bakers fairly straightforward. If you were a Cybake user, we made it easy to integrate with these applications, and still do.
For wholesale bakeries, however, it was a completely different story. Finding that the retail e-commerce sites were not really suitable, many bakeries commissioned web developers to create their own bespoke sites.
The idea was simple. Having an online portal for customers to make their orders would mean staff costs, phone bills and hours spent rectifying errors would all be reduced. Orders would also be more accurate, meaning the bakery could not be blamed for mistakes.
However, for most, the experience of setting up such a system was daunting, expensive and frustrating. Optimal outcomes were rare.
What bakeries needed was for their online orders to go straight into their production schedules. They needed the paperwork for payments (whether for COD or invoices) to be generated and issued automatically. And, ideally, they needed delivery notes to be issues the same automated way.
Cloud-only
In 2018, Cybake became a fully cloud-only application, within which online ordering for wholesale bakeries was built-in and fully integrated with the rest of the system.
Cybake’s web ordering capabilities then became a major driver of the software’s sales as we expanded across the USA, Australia and beyond.
As highlighted in a post earlier this year, just about every wholesale bakery that has adopted Cybake in both countries uses our web ordering feature. And the extensive case studies section of the Cybake website is packed full of bakers who attest to how it helped them grow their businesses.
Now, a new generation of e-commerce sites has come along targeted specifically at wholesale food producers. And, of course, we are happy to integrate Cybake with these sites if required.
I would still maintain, however, that a web ordering system that is truly integrated with the rest of your bakery’s processes will give you the best results.
With Cybake, your bakery gets its own online ordering portal with your branding as standard. We tailor the pages, product lists and cut-off times that it shows to your customers to suit you. You may want to show images of your products, for example, or you may wish to simply use text.
Cybake lets your customers manage their own standing orders and make any changes or one-off amends. You can set it so that customers see a “popular products” section which you can amend easily to drive sales on new or seasonal lines.
Prices
Importantly, Cybake’s ordering portal shows the specific prices that you want each individual customer to see. Cybake also builds delivery costs based on value of orders into your individual price lists for each customer.
Customers can view and download their own copy invoices, which saves admin time spent on resending them at your end and minimizes late payments.
Even more crucially, Cybake’s web ordering portal links back directly into Cybake’s food information module to show your customers up to date ingredient declaration, nutritional info (per 100g and per serving size), and allergens.
With deep integration, where your web order-taking portal is part of your overall system, reporting is another huge advantage.
Cybake’s BI modules (which also come as standard) slice and dice our users’ data into clear, accurate reports with graphs, charts and KPIs that are easy to understand across the business. Users can, for instance, see high level trend data from invoiced sales as well as profits by individual customers or products.
All the above is difficult to achieve unless your web ordering shop front is deeply embedded into the rest of your bakery’s ERP-type management system. Integration is key and this means most e-commerce sites will continue to struggle with serving the needs of producers of short-shelf-life food.
Whether you use Cybake and would like to activate your online ordering portal, or you are new to our software and would like to know more about how it can grow your bakery business, please get in touch.
Rachel Hindle is the Global Sales & Marketing Manager of Cybake.
