At this year’s IRCE in Chicago, we met hundreds of operations and warehouse managers searching for an order management system that solves a specific problem or creates more efficiency in their fulfillment operations.
The thing is, there are SO many options for how to do that - there are order management systems, warehouse management systems, fulfillment systems, and 3PLs, to name a few.
So why would you go with an open source order management system?
The short answer is that it will give you control and customization over your fulfillment operations to achieve higher efficiency, full automation, and easily scale up or down as needed.
You'll find a more detailed answer below.
The overwhelming majority of attendees we met at IRCE had a unique situation that could be improved by being able to fully customize their fulfillment processes.
What Open Source Is
In this case, open source order management software means that you get a feature-rich platform with full access to the source code.
If you’ve got your own programmers - they can get in there and edit the code, change the functionality, or add custom features.
The goal is to have 100% flexibility and control over the experience that your backend operations, warehouse, and fulfillment teams have while performing their day-to-day duties. Many businesses will be able to operate without an open source OMS, but having one can make all the difference to established businesses that know what they need but can’t find it anywhere else.
What You Can Do With an Open Source OMS
Most order management softwares can perform a lot of the same basic functions - inventory, orders, warehouses, fulfillment, and vendors.
Most of those softwares have a set process on how your process has to work inside them: first A, then B, then C.
But what happens when you have a custom type of order? What happens when your system isn’t rate shopping for you? What happens when you have refrigerated or frozen goods, and they’re melting on the truck or on the customer’s doorstep?
The employees in the warehouse or fulfillment center make the decision. Depending on the size of your staff, it may be different people each time, with different solutions to the same problem.
Now if you’ve got this down pat already, and a good process created, 👏 kudos.
Not everybody does though.
And when you scale, it becomes more difficult, less efficient, and there is less overall control on how fulfillment is completed.
This is where open source comes in.
Your team knows what to do, how it should be done, and the individual steps that they should take.
So you work with programmers to modify the system to fit your business processes. The key to an open source platform is that the software is adapted to your business - not the other way around.
A huge benefit of an open source platform is automation. Let’s say you always want to ship products using the fastest shipping carrier, unless an order has 3 or more products. If an order has 3 or more products, you want to use the cheapest shipping carrier.
Choosing the right shipping carrier is a very manual process, but with an open source system the process changes significantly. Instead of choosing options on a daily or per-order basis, the system chooses for you (based on automated rules you’ve set up) and automatically prepares shipping labels and prints picking and packing lists.
Open Source vs Closed Source/Proprietary
Here’s a simple explanation of how similar categories of platforms can have totally different features:
Open Source:
With an open source order management software, you’ll get the ability to fully customize your backend commerce operations software. By its very nature, it comes with maximum control and excellent scalability.
You will need to have someone on your team who can program or work with a third party in order to take full advantage of this type of platform.
Closed Source (SaaS)
These types of systems are usually finely honed products that tend to be good plug and play systems. Typically meant to be one-size-fits-all, but may offer add-ons, modules, or other features.
This kind of tool can (usually) be operated without much technical expertise.
Closed Source (Enterprise)
These types of systems tend to be more detailed and comprehensive products that can be customized with the help of the provider. Implementation is usually costly, and can take months or years to fully implement.
You’ll need to have an ongoing relationship (project based or retainer) with your provider to make the most of this solution.
How SkuNexus Does Open Source
If you’re using our enterprise order management platform, you’ll get full access to the source code of the system.
You’re free to use your own team members, our team, or a third party development agency to fully customize the product, its functionality, and your processes within it.
Typically our clients use most of the core functionality, and add an additional 10-20% customizations or functions on top of it.
And that amount of customization is usually all that’s needed to reach 100% automation of standard orders.
We come from a Magento background, so if you can work in Magento, you can probably work in our platform.
Why You’d Pick an Open Source OMS
You might be sitting on increased efficiency and not doing anything about it. An open source system in your backend commerce operations gives you an incredibly detailed amount of control over how your orders are processed, fulfilled, and shipped.
Your goal should be to automate 100% of your standard orders.
We met with a ton of ecommerce retailers at IRCE, and many of them had a few areas for improvement on the fulfillment side that they knew how to solve, but couldn’t in their current system. If that sounds like you, check out our comprehensive guide on order management, right here.
