An order management system (OMS) supports all the stages in a company’s sales process — from order creation to delivery. It provides a single, centralized system for managing orders from multiple sales channels, including brick-and-mortar locations, websites, mobile orders (app), kiosks and more. This further simplifies the buying process for customers and enables staff to manage orders, inventory and fulfillment with ease.
While all businesses have an inventory management system in place, not all management systems are created equally. In fact, more than half of retailers are still using pen-and-paper manual processes at some point in their logistics process, leading to order inaccuracies and confusion.
As ecommerce continues to grow and processes get even more complex, there is a need for an OMS that can model logistic activities and handle the operational intricacies of the various stores and warehouses. This helps with eliminating the need for pen and paper.
But there’s more to choosing and using an OMS than simply running order data through the platform; 42% of retailers say the OMS they have in place needs improvement. Today, order management requires a multi-dimensional system that touches nearly every facet of how your business operates. This means that it must integrate and interact with several other components, including POS, carriers, ERP, inventory and much more.
So how exactly will a well-performing OMS benefit your business? It will:
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Increase efficiency of your order management process, automating manual steps and improving the ability to process orders quickly
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Increase customer satisfaction through efficient and timely fulfillment, while enhancing your cash flow and profitability
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Enable stores to become hyperlocal fulfillment centers, reducing the distance between the product and the customer and the time and cost of fulfilling online orders, while offering customers a variety of products and delivery options
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Allow you to monitor inventory from all locations in real-time to avoid over or under stocks
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Moving dead or slow-moving inventory that are not selling well (leveraging ship-from-store)
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Facilitate employees and customers to view and track each order from start to finish, and you to analyze the overall efficiency of your process
With customer satisfaction and day-to-day business functioning at stake, retailers can rely on Orckestra’s flexible and scalable distributed order management system (OMS). Your network of stores has diverse capabilities - some only ship, some support both ship-from-store and pickup, whereas other stores may support transfers while some others can’t. Orckestra’s Omnichannel Order Management System can model all of these specific capabilities by store, warehouse, dropship vender, etc. These features allow you to route and fulfill optimally. As your omnichannel sales grow, Orckestra’s cloud-native and auto-scaling platform can seamlessly match demand peaks and grow alongside you in an environment that is yours; auto-scaling specifically for your solution.
Orckestra’s configurable workflows support complex and unique business processes, as well as all omnichannel fulfillment scenarios, to enable you to route orders to the right location and for your staff to fulfill orders more efficiently. Unifying all your inventory and fulfillment locations, Orckestra helps you turn your stores into hyperlocal fulfillment centers. With its flexible and advanced order routing, it ensures orders are fulfilled from the best location each time, or the best locations if the order cannot be fulfilled from one single location - helping you cut shipping costs and improve revenues.
Reasons to integrate the right OMS into your day-to-day logistics are endless. Order management has a direct impact on how a customer perceives a brand because it guides and facilitates customer experiences. In an omnichannel 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 and fulfillment milestone, in the customer journey, presents an opportunity for retailers to not only improve the customer experience, but also boost retention and revenue.
To stay competitive and grow your business, you need to be able to accept and fulfill orders from various channels efficiently. Regardless of where or how the order is placed, customers should have the same consistent and excellent experience and the right OMS like that of Orckestra’s Omnichannel Order Management System propels you to do just that.