Every time you place an order, there is a process run in the background until you finally receive your purchase.
Why order management is important
Order management touches virtually every system and process in the supply chain. Most companies no longer contain order management within their organization. They involve multiple partners such as parts and components suppliers, assembly and packaging services or distribution centers, making it easy to lose visibility and control of an order.
Basic Steps of the Order Management Process
Inventory availability Customer or sales team verifies inventory is available as they review various products or services.
Order Customer places the order across a range of possible channels — web, mobile, call center, store, marketplaces and others.
Verification A sales team member or an automated system verifies with the customer that the order is placed and collects or records the pertinent data for the order — name, address, telephone contact, email, promotional codes and other data.
Inventory promising System or team member matches the product or service to fulfill the order.
Fulfillment The product or team is dispatched through a distribution channel such as ship-from-warehouse or distribution center, ship-from-store, pickup-in-store, online download or a sales person simply hands over the item. Fulfillment is verified as well — customer sign-off for the completion of a service.
Service Making an appointment, scheduling installation or delivery services, or even exchanging or returning a product.² This may be the first step in a new business process but can also be associated with order management.
Distributed Order Management
At the heart of an OMS is the distributed order management (DOM) capability, software that enables an OMS to intelligently route orders to the optimum destinations or resources for fulfillment. DOM is critical to managing the business processes associated with an order and helps deliver a seamless customer experience across channels.
Use the order management benefits calculator can provide an estimate of potential incremental gross margin benefits from implementing omnichannel capabilities like BOPIS, BORIS and ship from store.
Key features of effective order management
- Visibility
- Intelligence
- Flexibility
- Real-Time Inventory
- Delivery and Service Scheduling
- Customer Engagement Technologies
- Fulfillment Optimization
Order Management Process
Customer place Order
The first stage of any order management process begins when a customer places an order with your business. Receiving includes accepting the order from the customer and collecting payment for it.
Order details sent to inventory
After this is done, the details of the purchase are forwarded to your warehouse so your staff can start working on getting the products ready for shipment.In the second stage, you actually fulfill your customer’s order.
Order is Picked, Packed & Shipped
Fulfilling an order starts with the picking process, in which the items are retrieved from the warehouse. Warehouses are usually lined with shelves that are each stocked with different types of products, so warehouse workers need to be able to pick the right items for an order quickly and accurately.
Check if customer is satisfied
The packing station has more responsibilities than just packing items and sending them off for shipping. They are also in charge of using the right packaging materials for each product so that it reaches the customer intact and in good condition, while also using resources efficiently.
Request review
Attaching the applicable shipping label and invoice to the order.Marking the order as shipped in all of your sales channels.Sending out shipping confirmation and order tracking emails to the customer
Resolve issue
The last stage of order management is handling the after-sales processes. This is where businesses follow up with customers to receive feedback and make sure that they are satisfied with their purchase, and to manage any returns and refunds if they are not.
An organized and well-planned process for managing orders can do wonders for a business’ cashflow and inventory.
Order can only happen in that order if your business has the necessary products in stock.
Order management is also applicable for businesses that offer services instead of goods, although the process is slightly different. For instance, consider a mobile network provider.
- Receiving inventory shipments.
- Inventory storage.
- Order processing.
- Shipping.
- Returns processing.
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