An OMS system is an Order Management System and is used to improve inventory control and management of orders from suppliers, and from customers. Before the days of automated order management systems is was difficult to track an order as it went through your business, the order had to pass through many hands and to ensure it was delivered on time and to quality it had to be handled carefully to ensure a piece of paper didn’t get lost or disappear.
Now automated order management systems make running a company so much easier, especially when handling large volumes of orders, and when you add in just in time production and several suppliers and hundreds of components. Not to mention providing customers with so many more options than they used to have including customization, color options, and sizes variables.
But now order management systems are becoming more advanced, what extra features can you look out for that may help you decide on the best OMS system for your business?
Functions of a Good OMS System
First of all a good order management systems will have end to end visibility, providing reports across multiple sales channels. By allowing you to see all sales channels you can make holistic decisions on the business such as negotiating order quantities, investing in plant and machinery, deciding when to order and where to have it delivered. It also allows you to allocate stock based on status, so if an order is placed the stock can be allocated in the warehouse even though it hasn’t left the warehouse. Manually counting doesn’t take this into consideration. For stock counts and audits you can also track stock in transit or on order.
It also allows you to build in total product cost to your return on investment and profit and loss calculations, so you can work out which of your product lines are most profitable, and if you may need to change prices for any products.
Integrated order processing allows you to synchronize order and warehouse inventory management with EDI data provided to stockists and customers so they know what quantity is available to them and a relatively accurate date of delivery if they were to place an order right now. This massively reduces manual data entry which eliminates errors, reduces staffing headcount and costs and reduce order processing times. Integration with EDI systems also bring you into compliance with larger retails and wholesales who often will only deal with suppliers who use EDI systems.
Customer fulfillment is optimized through delivering an order management system by having end to end order management, being able to support bulk and single SKU orders, and therefore to work with customers of varying sizes from large retailers to individual consumers.
Another facet that can be added as well is drop shipping which allows for adoption of new suppliers to greatly increase product portfolio and SKU count without have to increase warehousing and shipping infrastructure.
2018 ·
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