What would a perfect order management system look like to your business? Efficiency and a low total cost of ownership are broad elements most would agree are essential in a strong order management system. There’s one indispensable feature to order management systems that help achieve these goals: automation.
The Order-to-Cash cycle is made up of multiple parts: order creation, fulfillment, warehouse management, distribution and payment processing. Completing the order-to-cash cycle with fewer man-hours, less manual data input and less room for human error should be the ultimate goal of an efficient order management system.
Warehouse Management
If you were able to design a flawless OMS, workflows that move orders from one step to the next automatically, while maximizing efficiency in a people-run warehouse, would be the first step. An order management system that is able to intelligently learn your warehouse layout and create smart lists for an efficient picking-and-packing path will waste less time walking shelf-to-shelf.
Bringing Brick-and-Mortar and Online Together
Holding aging stock in the warehouse wastes valuable space that new items could occupy – but to give online shoppers the best experience, many warehouses will reorder discounted item sizes to avoid out-of-stock messages online. With a future-facing order management system, sizes and items can be ordered and fulfilled directly from physical store locations. It’s like having hundreds-to-thousands of mini warehouses at your disposal. The store associates are notified at the POS and stock is updated within seconds across the online store and all other physical locations. The less out-of-stock online, the better the customer experience, and the larger the Average Order Volumes.
Visibility
Online commerce has been trending towards incorporating drop-shipments and outside vendors to give the customer the best selection of items. When running a site with many vendors, communications about re-orders, low stock alerts, out-of-stocks and Purchase Orders can get lost in inefficient and insecure channels like office email and phone calls. It’s essential to choose an OMS with vendor portals the provide a secure single source of communication, with complete visibility on both sides about POs, where stock is sitting, payments, and stock levels. Providing a portal for your vendor for monitoring how much of their stock is allocated to your site ensures that your company will never oversell a drop-ship item without the vendors able to fulfill on their end, providing a better customer experience.
Time is money in order management, and automation, efficiency, and visibility are the three pillars to excellence in order management. To see how SmartStock360 can achieve all three of these crucial components, contact us for a free analysis of your order management needs and a free demo of our platform.
