You Need To Uplevel Your Order Management System — Now What?

The growth of ecommerce changes everything — from customer expectations, shipping times, and where (and how) a sale is made. These changes aren’t just happening in the direct-to-consumer space. Business buyers also demand the expediency and convenience of ecommerce. What’s one way to tackle it all and make the biggest difference for your customers? Order management. If brands fail to deliver (literally), nothing else matters. If you know your company’s order management system (OMS) needs improvement, this is where to start.

How to create a better order management system

Our customer success experts hear about brands’ OMS challenges all the time. With their experience helping companies achieve better order management and fulfillment, their biggest piece of advice is to start out right. They suggest your team should answer these five questions before you take order management to the next level. 

1. What are the business needs for your transformation? 

For example, maybe your customer service agents or sales reps struggle to gain a full view of the customer across the order lifecycle. Or maybe your highest priority is more flexibility to define new order workflows. Perhaps you’re considering a new shipping service partner. Understand your goals to help you focus. 

2. Can you get leadership onboard upfront?

Digital transformation starts at the top (and not just with IT). Order management systems impact marketing, service, sales, development, security, and more, so it’s important to evangelize across teams. Collaborative executive leadership provides direction, guidance, and enthusiasm – all critical for success. Gain their buy-in first.

3. What does your OMS look like in a year? In three years?

Design your future experience strategy — and use your key business driver to lead the way. Focus on the ideal post-purchase experience, and include both technical and business considerations. Incorporate all areas of the impacted business. Sure, it’s impossible to know exactly how your system or budget will look in three years. But thinking about it now helps you choose the right project for the most impact on your customer experience or bottom line. 

4. How will you communicate updates and results?

Use your roadmap and a list of the involved teams to create a regular communication schedule and to notify stakeholders of updates as early as possible. Keep stakeholders informed before and after this project. Where does their expertise lie? Will you need these stakeholders’ help for success? 

5. What roles do you need to execute your plan?

Your will probably need to include:

• A strong project manager. Someone to lead the team and be the coordinator across internal groups and partners.
• A technical architect. Someone who knows your current state systems and data model, and to help define the architecture and data migration.
• Order, fulfillment, and customer service or sales SMEs. Workers on the front lines with customers, those who know your internal business processes, and existing pain points.

The answers to these questions pave the road toward better order management systems. But this isn’t a once-and-done exercise. Throughout the process, it’s important to revisit these questions and make adjustments as needed.

Good order management needs great partners

You can read more about Salesforce’s approach to order management. Modern systems need to be flexible enough for teams to meet customers’ expectations. This includes flexible shipping and delivery options, transparent order status, or self-service order status and returns.

Here’s something else to consider when building out your order management strategy: Brands need to create exceptional post-purchase experiences across channels. It’s no longer just about digital versus physical — it’s digital and physical. In fact, 59% of shoppers have purchased a product online for in-store pickup. Similarly, 67% of shoppers have bought something else while returning something in-store. B2B buyers’ expectations are also rising, and they now expect the same options as consumers. In 2020, there was a 44% global increase in B2B orders placed online. Being accessible via a mobile app, desktop, or physical store is important to the overall customer lifecycle.

To break down these barriers, focus on delivering fast and easy shipping, transparent order statuses, and hassle-free returns at-scale, regardless of channel. To make this happen, we work with partners like Mad Mobile, Zenkraft, PayPal, and Vertex to bridge the gap between digital and physical. 

Get started with better order management systems

Make sure any OMS platform your team is considering helps you:

• Understand the experiences you need and want to create for your customers. 
• Connect commerce and service for a single view of customer cases, orders, and more. 
• Give customers the power to self-serve, check order status, cancel, or initiate a return.
• Let reps manage returns, cancellations, and other services from a single screen.
• Execute complex orders, including split or partial shipments, across several addresses. 
• Gain instant payment capture without manual generation and settling of invoices.