5 Ways An Order Management System Improves Business Efficiency

By Frank Kouretas, Orckestra, powered by mdf commerce

All retailers understand that to grow and sustain their online presence they need to invest in technology that creates a streamlined process for processing and shipping orders. It will allow them to ensure that their online stores run efficiently. The same value is often not derived from the order management infrastructure implemented. Retailers are not able to optimize their OMS to improve processes, business productivity, and customer satisfaction.

An order management system (OMS) is a digital way to manage the life cycle of an order. It tracks all information and processes from order submission, inventory management, and fulfillment to after-sales service, offering visibility to both the business and the buyer. It touches virtually every system and process in the retailer's ecosystem.

Increasingly, companies have to deal with multiple entities in order management including product information management, assembly, and packaging services, distribution centers, stores, and shipping carriers. With a growing list of interfaces in a retailer's ecosystem, it is easier to lose control and visibility of an order, resulting in costly manual processes to complete and deliver the order without errors. With near real-time insight, OMS can help control costs and generate revenue by automating manual processes and reducing errors.

Order management has a direct impact on how a customer perceives a brand because it guides and facilitates customer experiences. In an omni-channel environment, customers expect a seamless experience, whether it is placing an order online and completing fulfillment in store or receiving updates on the status of their orders. Each ordering milestone in the customer journey presents an opportunity for retailers to not only improve the customer experience but also boost retention and revenue.

Here is a list of 5 things that you did not know an OMS could do, which can help improve your business efficiency -

1. Leveraging existing technology - An OMS isn’t always the first technology that a business adopts. Typically, businesses are already using ERP or warehouse management software, online sales channels, or eCommerce platforms that don’t necessarily talk to each other. An order management process ties almost all of a retailer’s major systems together, so it’s vital that it integrates easily with other systems and can exchange data with all of them. The right OMS can become the central building block of the commerce ecosystem and leverage existing technology & investment without the need for re-platforming.
    
2. Enterprise-level inventory visibility - It's imperative for businesses to have eyes on their inventory at all times. Most retailers today have multiple supplier relationships and different sources of inventory. An OMS can help unify inventory sources and capture real-time changes. This enables you to make all your product inventory accessible on every sales channel, no matter where it is located.

Furthermore, you can fulfill online sales with inventory from any location. If shipping from a central DC makes more sense then you will do that, but if you can fulfill the order faster and at a lower cost from a nearby store you will do that instead. All this happens in real-time as your OMS can leverage knowledge of inventory and pre-defined business rules to route orders to the optimal source of inventory.

3. Predictable adaptability - Dealing with demand fluctuations and changing strategies is essential for every retailer to meet consumer expectations and grow the business. Whether it is an unusually high “peak” season or a competitor’s recall that has increased demand for their products, an OMS can help you organize to overcome these challenges. The OMS can seamlessly handle the automation, inventory fluctuation, and delivery promise to ensure that the commerce ecosystem does not choke on higher-than-average volume when orders go through the roof.
    
4. Flexible workflows - As a business grows, fulfillment requirements can become overwhelming. An effective and efficient order management system should enable the integration of multiple shipping services as needed, with options for direct and multi-carrier integrations managed from a single platform.

In the case of multiple carriers, it’s imperative to know the most cost-effective option based on the weight and location of the order. With an OMS, users can set rules based on product dimensions, product inventory, shipping costs, delivery regions, and more so the platform automatically selects the best courier option based on this information. An OMS can handle complex workflows such as BOPIS, ship-from-store, and split shipments, allowing retailers to scale their omni-channel offering efficiently.

5. User-friendly - When choosing an OMS, it’s important to look for an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that can be utilized by your business and technical users. An OMS that’s too complicated for employees and managers can be frustrating and cost retailers time, money, and may require skilled personnel just to operate it. Look for an OMS that is simple and configurable and that employees have no trouble onboarding.

About The Author

As Chief Product Officer at Orckestra (powered by mdf commerce), Frank leads product strategy and product management, driving the next wave of commerce innovation and beautifully simple shopping experiences. Frank is passionate about building and marketing innovative technology products and brings over 15 years of leadership experience in product development, product management, and marketing. Before joining Orckestra, Frank was VP of Products and Marketing at Radialpoint where he led the development of innovative customer experience products used by some of the world’s leading service providers to support millions of customers.