OMS (Order Management System): Why do you need one?

Consumers are driving commerce across more channels and platforms than ever before, and they’re looking for excellent experiences at every touchpoint. So, multichannel retail businesses are not only having to juggle thousands of products and processes, but they also need to deliver an excellent service to customers with very high expectations. 

It’s a high-volume, high-pressure situation, and it needs a special tool for the job — an Order Management System (OMS).

An OMS is the ‘brain’ that coordinates a huge web of systems — customer orders, fulfillment and shipping, tracking, processing, and synchronization. Without an order management system in place, businesses will likely be experiencing a number of challenges. Let’s explore some of the common ones.

A lack of stock oversight

To manage orders efficiently, you must be able to view your entire inventory. Without an OMS, your business won’t be able to regulate what has been ordered from where, and what the resulting stock levels are. The challenge becomes even more complex if warehouses carry different product categories or are dispersed across a large area. However, with an Order Management System, you can manage diverse product catalogs easily.

Poor customer experience

Without stock insight, you will be overselling or underselling products and might be making promises to customers you can’t keep. Issues like selling out on customer favorites or not being able to deliver the right product on time will result in very unhappy customers who will likely place their orders elsewhere in the future. With an Order Management System, you can provide your customer the best experience catered especially to their needs.

Inefficient manual processes

Manual processes are slower and prone to human error. What might appear to be inconsequential initially — one wrong digit on a price list, or incorrect invoice — can cause a whole host of issues down the line. This can have a long-term effect on how much your business can scale over time. How can your brand take on more products or services if the processes behind the scenes are slow and unreliable? It’s possible with a headless eCommerce platform that can help you setting up your multichannel retail businesses

Data silos

In order to create a great customer experience that will build brand loyalty, a business needs to understand the finer details of all its customer orders. This information also informs wider strategic decision making, for example, what product categories are performing best each season, or what markets a company should invest in. Without an Order Management System, customer data is not being utilized to the organization’s advantage. It can sit in silos, not reaching the correct departments or people that make critical decisions.