Three Brothers Bakery in Houston has parlayed the popularity of its famous pecan pie into booming online sales.

With new technology seemingly changing every moment, bakery and pastry shop owners are challenged with keeping pace. Online ordering is coming on fast, and electronic commerce is becoming vital to the success of any independent small business.

Shopping online has changed the retail world in the United States and globally. The National Retail Federation estimates e-commerce sales will total around $430 billion in 2017.

Bakeries are seeking out solutions to implement online ordering capabilities, and the benefits are clear: Consumers today demand the convenience of online shopping, and e-commerce allows you to have a virtual storefront that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

New technology is answering the challenge.

OrderNova is a new cloud-based ordering technology platform that enables bakeries to accept and manage custom orders, e-commerce orders, and wholesale orders with ease. Built using the latest web technologies, OrderNova (www.ordernova.com) solves ordering problems unique to the baking industry.

Mike Clements and Jerred Sydnor, the owners of BakeSmart bakery software, founded OrderNova. “It’s not often that a company will create a product to compete with an existing product that company offers, but in this instance, we had a compelling case to make,” Clements says.

BakeSmart has been solving a myriad of problems for retail and wholesale bakeries. For well over a decade, BakeSmart has provided bakeries with the tools they need to serve customers effectively and operate their business efficiently.

“Over time, we realized our unique value offering was our focus on how bakeries accept and manage orders,” Clements says. “This realization, coupled with our ongoing mission to continuously improve our software offerings to the baking industry, were the beginnings of OrderNova.”

With an investment in new technologies, they designed and developed OrderNova to be a cloud-based ordering platform capable of integrating with software platforms that solve point-of-sale, loyalty, inventory, timekeeping, accounting, and other problems that small businesses must solve.

“As we chart a path into the future and write another chapter in our company’s history, we are excited about our growing team and its exacting focus on having a positive impact in the baking industry for years to come,” Clements says.