In today’s omnichannel retail environment, the era of monolithic order management systems that serve huge, linear warehouse-to-store logistics is drawing to a close. But what are the options to replace it? Investing in an OMS is a considerable expense. And an inflexible order management system (OMS) that’s designed to meet the needs of a company different from your own may end up being more hindrance than help.
Luckily, there’s a new breed of order management software that meets the challenges of omnichannel retail.
Customers have increasingly high CX expectations, including the ability to choose from a range of pickup locations and return options. As a result, retailers must learn to adapt.
Therefore, modern ecommerce order management software needs to account for the different channels and delivery methods that abound today. Subsequently, unifying sales and distribution data to create a single view of inventory.
What’s an OMS? How Does It Work?
Built for retailers, an order management system (OMS) is a commerce technology that helps track orders across commerce channels. The system helps with order processing and order fulfillment. It also allows companies to streamline the fulfillment process to better manage inventory, improve warehouse management, and bolster customer communications.
How an Order Management System (OMS) Solves Common Business Challenges
1. Increases Sales
Even though OMS is a backend function, it’s a mistake to think it simply concerns logistics. Good retail order management will increase your capacity to implement BOPIS and curbside pickup. This will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. In other words, if ordering from you is fast, pleasant, and hassle-free, customers are likely to keep coming back.
2. Optimizes Inventory
In a world where customers have gotten used to convenience when shopping online, it can be a challenge for retailers to know exactly where their stock is and how much they have. Intelligent order management software will know exactly where inventory is in your fulfillment network, irrespective of location. This stops brand-damaging problems such as customers ordering products that turn out not to be in stock.
Modern Retail Requires Modern Order Management Solutions
The fulfillment needs of modern retail are constantly evolving and increasingly complex. They require order management software that is smart enough to deliver real-time views of inventory, regardless of location or channel.
In short, this enhanced view is about customer satisfaction. In effect, it’s about being able to deliver customer-first commerce.
3. An Order Management System Reduces Costs
Having a 360-degree view of your whole operation helps bring down costs. When a customer places an order, a good ecommerce OMS will be able to locate the nearest available product and automatically route it via the most efficient delivery pathway, meaning you can ship from locations closer to the customer. Not only will this reduce transportation costs, but it will also slash the time customers have to wait to receive their order.
It also means you can cut excess stock at the same time as increasing the amount of ATP inventory.
4. Delivers Faster
A granular view of inventory, and the flexibility it brings, means you can optimize delivery times. In addition, an automated process on where to dispatch orders from means your stores can become fulfillment centers and meet customers’ expectations.
5 Key Benefits of an Order Management System
1. Ongoing Support and Upgrades
Newer order management systems operate on a SaaS platform. Updates, patches, and fixes are provided on an ongoing basis. OMS vendors also offer continuous support.
2. Agility As Business Needs Change
Microservices-based order management is designed to be extensible and can grow with your business. Also, the flexibility inherent in this approach means there’s no need for cumbersome and expensive extras.
3. Low Maintenance
Issues like security and compliance are critical to the running of OMS operations but not every business has the in-house expertise to handle them. What’s more, cloud-native OMS platforms have dedicated teams that take care of maintenance for you. Consequently, this frees up resources to focus on your core business.
4. Greater Customer Visibility and Insight
An order management system that integrates with your existing tech stack can sort and segment sales data, giving you a granular view of customer behavior across channels and geographic regions, all at a unified touchpoint that teams in different parts of your business can access.
5. Innovate Faster
More customer data points mean you’ll be able to see more quickly what effect your product and marketing changes have. That is, more feedback makes for quicker iterations.
The Right Approach to Order Management
Flexible to your needs: Order management software built with an API layer can integrate with your existing technology, including headless applications. Therefore, it’s an approach that recognizes the uniqueness of your logistics challenges and can adapt to them seamlessly.
Migrating to an API-first order management system causes minimal disruption across your network.
An extensible approach with a microservices architecture has the benefit of being able to grow with your business. Features that are not mission-critical right now but may become so in the future can be added when needed.
Cloud-native order management that operates on a multi-tenant, SaaS model can deliver enterprise-scale systems to fit the requirements of clients of all sizes.
This model offers frequent platform innovations and a smooth upgrade process. It means low maintenance for your business with updates rolled out automatically.
Ecommerce order management that incorporates personalization as part of a commerce platform will let you deliver outstanding UX, driving repeat customers and boosting ROI.
How to Pick the Best OMS for Ecommerce
To sum up, there are many reasons to invest in a cloud-based order management software, from a desire to have greater agility and flexibility to a lack of internal resources to maintain the current platform.
Depending on your omnichannel needs, you’ll want to select a platform that offers robust out-of-the-box capabilities, and is highly extensible to support your unique needs. The right OMS should have the ability to be extended to your specific needs without customizing you into a costly corner.
Your go-to vendor should also be able to help you migrate from your existing homegrown OMS/ERP solution with as little disruption as possible. Kibo will ensure that the migration of key information such as product, customer, checkout and fulfillment is a smooth process that leads to the ultimate goal of having a modern platform that is constantly updated with innovative features.
Why Retailers Need Distributed Order Management (DOM)
Retail has become increasingly customer-centric. Distributed order management software can help deliver products in ways that shoppers praise.
What Forrester Recommends In An Order Management System (OMS) Provider
A breakdown of the top-7 most significant order management platform providers.
