What is an order management system?
An order management system (OMS) helps manage the lifecycle of an order digitally, from start to finish. It can track information and processes like order entry, inventory management, fulfillment, and after-sales service. Having an OMS offers visibility to both businesses and customers. Organizations can get near real-time insight into inventories while customers can check when their orders will arrive.
Why is order management important?
Order management is a process that affects every part of the supply chain. In most cases, companies outsource this part of their business because it requires coordination between multiple partners, like suppliers of parts and components, assembly and packaging services, or distribution centers. This can make it difficult to keep track of the order and leads to costly manual processes that are often error-prone. Implementing an OMS can help reduce costs and generate revenue by automating manual processes and reducing errors.
Order management has a direct impact on how a customer perceives a business or brand. In an omnichannel environment, customers expect a seamless experience. A customer may order online but have questions and complete the order through a call center. As the order is being fulfilled, the customer expects to see updates like emails along the way. If there is a problem, they may wish to return it through a physical channel such as a store. Each point in the journey presents an opportunity to provide a great customer experience and boost retention and revenue.
Key features of effective order management
With Supply ChainVisibility, you can view your entire supply chain at a glance and isolate events to anticipate problems and develop more efficient processes.
With Supply ChainIntelligence, you can tune your order management processes to an organization’s business rules and performance goals.
With Supply ChainFlexibility, you can break orders or events into unique work items that can be channeled to the appropriate systems or resources.
With Real-time inventory, you can get a single view of inventory, and see what’s in stock, in transit, and current demand levels — reducing the need to expedite shipments or maintain excessive safety stock.
Technology can help product managers in several ways, from delivery and service scheduling to customer engagement and fulfillment optimization.
Delivery and service scheduling: By matching delivery commitments to inventory, resources, and skills, product managers can make sure service requests are addressed more efficiently.
Customer engagement technologies: By giving customer-facing personnel a view of the customer, back-end inventory, and resources, product managers can help them execute transactions more efficiently.
Fulfillment optimization: By analyzing data and recommending options that consider how and where customers want orders shipped, time-to-delivery, and cost, product managers can help optimize fulfillment operations.