The 411 on Order Management Systems: Streamline Your Back Office to Deliver Great Customer Service

By guest author Mikhail Ledvich, Director of Product Marketing at Monsoon Commerce

When it comes to customer service, certain delays and mistakes in getting your products to customers have the potential to seriously harm your business and its reputation. You need to perfect your operations strategy early-on to prevent costly mistakes with customers. This is easier to do when your business is small, but as your company grows, you’ll find that manual processes can impede your ability to compete.

An Order Management System (OMS) is a powerful piece in the ecommerce ecosystem that can help ecommerce businesses scale their operations. Many retailers are surprised when they realize just how many tasks and operations can be automated by the software, as well as completed faster and more accurately than if done manually.

Here are just a few of the operations that an Order Management System can automate for your ecommerce business:

Automatic Order Processing and Routing

If you are considering using multiple warehouses or going with a mix of drop-shipping and stored inventory, an OMS can automatically route orders to the correct warehouses and/or drop shippers as defined by the rules you set up. It can also tag certain orders for manual review or selected for faster processing.

Inventory Quantity Updates

An OMS keeps track of your inventory and updates it in real-time. It also controls orders across all channels. So, if you list your items across multiple websites and online marketplaces and also have a physical store, an OMS can keep your inventory in sync everywhere.

Automatic Re-ordering

Don’t be caught without inventory again. An OMS allows you to set re-order points on each item, and when the inventory drops below the set quantity, the software will automatically e-mail a PO to the supplier for replenishment.

Financial Clarity

If you order the same SKUs from different suppliers at different price points, your accounting department must love you. An Order Management System will keep track of the costs at which the inventory is acquired and prices at which the products are sold. This will ensure that the accounting and on-hand inventory value is always correctly calculated.

Fulfillment and Shipping

Every online business wants to ship faster, more accurately and with increased cost effectiveness. As items are packed, an OMS can verify that the right items are being shipped and can perform rate shopping across multiple carriers to save money on shipping.

These are only a few examples of what an OMS can automate for your ecommerce business. If you choose the right OMS system, you will see a significant improvement in workflow and efficiency, and a decrease in order costs, inventory costs and fulfillment errors.

About the Guest Author:

Mikhail Ledvich leads Monsoon Commerce product management and is the chief evangelist across a multi-product portfolio. From order processing, to inventory management, to dynamic marketplace pricing, Monsoon Commerce offers the full suite of services you need to increase revenue with maximum efficiency in every channel.