Intelligent OMS – The Next Big Step For Enhancing Your Online Sales

With the rapid growth of e-commerce, changing customer expectations, and fierce competition, we understand that managing online retail business has become complicated. In this scenario, to ensure that your end-to-end operations, right from customer placing an order to fulfillment and inventory management, you need to leverage the power of an Order Management System (OMS). This blog will walk you through the many benefits of an order management system and why you should work with an expert implementation partner to make the most out of technology investment.

Before that, let’s look at some of the recent statistics about online sales – sales via online retail stores are about to touch $6.17 trillion by 2023, with e-commerce websites grabbing 22.3% of total sales.

Now, let’s get to the main topic –

What is an order management system?

An OMS is a software platform that helps retailers like you track sales, orders, inventory, and fulfillment status in real-time. It helps you with a single, centralized system for managing orders from multiple sales channels, including offline stores and websites.

As a process, order management happens right after a customer places an order. The OMS then enables you with timely execution of every process at every stage, including locating the item, picking it up from the warehouse, ensuring packaging, and shipping/routing the product before finally delivering it to the customer.

What about an omnichannel order management system?

An omnichannel order management system allows you to access customer orders, inventory, logistics information, etc., across all channels. It orchestrates all orders across the enterprise while providing you with the relevant information to operate efficiently. To put it in another way, an Omnichannel OMS enables you to allow your customers to shop and return anywhere at their convenience. Hence, it helps you meet their expectations.

Features and benefits

New-age, feature-rich, and agile order management system like IBM Sterling Order Management is a complete omnichannel order fulfillment platform that technologically empowers you to drive business growth with customer experience.

  • Clear inventory visibility: Access inventory data with a single, scalable, and real-time view of demand across sources, including insights into inventory levels/thresholds and supply-demand matching.
  • Optimized order sourcing: Analyze orders and relevant business scenarios to make the best sourcing decisions for improved capacity. 
  • Improved offline store experience: Conveniently search in-store products and gain fulfillment flexibility for Buy Online Pick-Up in Store (BOPIS), Ship from Store (SFS), and Ship to Store (STS) to serve customers better.
  • AI-powered execution: Optimize fulfillment process and inventory levels, improve cost-to-serve, and balance fulfillment operations with advanced machine learning capabilities.
  • Order orchestration: Modify, cancel, track, and monitor orders in real-time across channels with configurable, automated order workflows in a single dashboard.  
  • Reverse logistics: Handle returns dispositioning, accept cross-channel returns, and gain visibility into return order status to optimize inventory and boost customer satisfaction with increased value.
  • Configure, price, and quote: Facilitate the creation of sales quotations to help you sales team sell faster and more accurately at the right price, while keeping a customer’s needs in mind.

With an intelligent order management system, you can –

  • Accelerate your digital transformation by creating a streamlined and modern sales, order, and delivery management platform.
  • Improve order accuracy to win over customer loyalty. You can provide them with real-time visibility into their orders while ensuring on-time delivery.
  • Save costs by making data-backed decisions to reduce inventory and logistics costs.
  • Avoid stockouts and keep all channels updated. Evade chances of delivering the wrong item to customers.
  • Ensure friction-less returns and exchange process.
  • Save time, reduce errors, and improve operational capabilities with zero manual intervention.

Choosing the right e-commerce order management system

Selecting the right order management system could be a little tricky when the market is inundated with a variety of them from various providers. You need to pay attention while adopting the right one with all the operationally imperative features vital to your business requirements.

  • Look at your existing process and analyze your requirements.
  • Make sure that the OMS you select is on the cloud. It helps you access the system on the go.
  • The OMS should seamlessly integrate with your existing systems.
  • Make sure to see if the OMS integrates with third-party systems, including invoicing solutions, marketplaces, and others.
  • It should be agile enough to help you with scalability as your business requirements grow.
  • It should eliminate manual processes with comprehensive automation.
  • Consider examining the solution’s future-readiness.
  • Find out what existing users have to say about the OMS.

Do it right with an expert implementation partner

This is a very critical phase. You might not be able to see the desired results out of your OMS investment if your implementation partner doesn’t have the required domain knowledge. It is highly advisable to work with a vendor like Acuver Consulting, which has comprehensive expertise in implementing a robust IBM Sterling Order Management Solution. It will accelerate your digital transformation journey by simplifying technology and removing implementation complexities. Additionally, a carefully selected technology vendor can take up other operation-critical activities, including upgrades, migration, quality assurance, automation, reporting, and managed services.

As you get ready to embrace multi-channel retail, an order management system becomes more essential for you. It is the way forward for the e-commerce world. Leveraging the suitable OMS with an expert partner can help you ensure a faster, more personalized, and error-free order fulfillment experience for your customers. In short, an OMS is the best option for your growing e-commerce retail business to drive growth, profitability, and brand value – all these with a competitive edge.

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