Order Management System (OMS) | Microsoft Dynamics 365

Get missed.
Be inaccurate or wrong.
Go unfulfilled.
Take longer to ship than initially determined.

If a customer experiences any of the situations mentioned above again and again—or even just one time—that customer might cultivate a negative perception of your business’s operations, making it easier for competitors to offer a better experience.

In short, adding an OMS to your process helps:

Align sales representatives and online platforms.
Track success with analytics.
Manage complex shipping schedules.
Coordinate inventory with available orders across multiple channels.
Ensure order fulfillment when using third-party logistics.
Eliminate human error with manual entries, as well as inefficiencies and inconsistent resource allocation.

Dynamics 365 helps your business fill orders quickly and efficiently

Optimize and automate your order fulfillment capabilities with Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management—a solution that integrates with existing CRM and ERP systems to save you time and money in your digital supply chain transformation.

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Fulfill customer needs across multiple channels for a seamless e-commerce experience, eliminating your team’s time on fulfilling orders and training teammates. It also gives a high-level overview of orders, cutting down on mistakes and human errors, and putting all the real-time data you’ll need in a single location.
Eliminate manual processes.
Report and forecast inventory needs to avoid over-ordering or overselling. During unexpected demand fluctuations, you’ll be able to connect to your inventory channels to enact a merchant-fulfilled strategy.
Integrate across company systems like ERP, including warehouses, customer service teams, and accounting.
Take orders from multiple countries in multiple currency types. As the world becomes globalized, your team needs to be prepared so you’re able to grow in new markets with ease.

Some tasks that an OMS can handle are:

Optimizing and automating order fulfillment.
Mitigating process disruptions.
Managing the order lifecycle.
Responses to ever-changing business models.

The benefits of an OMS

No matter the size of your company, implementing an order management system can improve your business operations from the top down. Here’s just a few of the several benefits to adding an OMS to your business.

Automation. An order management system relies on automation, from operating your storefront to delivering your product. This lets you save on manual labor, helping reduce labor costs. As fulfillment windows are becoming shorter, an OMS chooses the warehouse or fulfillment location, dictates the order of fulfillment, and sends a fulfillment request to the warehouse so the staff can prepare for the order.

Because you’re able to shorten the fulfillment time, you’ll be able to re-allocate resources used to focus on more intricate parts of your business that help growth and customer satisfaction. It’ll also increase data security, a significant component in today’s increasingly digitized world.
Less human error. As one of the top sources of fulfillment mistakes for warehouses, human errors can cause significant problems. No matter the size of the error. By implementing an accurate order management system, tasks are handled automatically. An OMS can perform multichannel inventory control and warehouse optimization by sending alerts on everything from inventory levels to possible liquidation needs. This helps prevent shipping delays, marketplace fees, and dissatisfied customers.
Real-time reporting. Processing orders takes time. While updating your system, new information is constantly coming through. And when you are manually adding these items in by hand, you may not always have the most up-to-date information at hand. An OMS can provide real-time data for orders, inventory, and customer information. This type of data is a great companion to your website analytics, ensuring your marketing strategies are successful in procuring customers long term.
Prevents stockouts by forecasting inventory. If your business doesn’t have access to forecasting software and inventory levels, you won’t be able to track when to stock your warehouse. This leads to two big problems: overstocking and stockouts—meaning you either have large quantities of unsold inventory sitting in a warehouse or not enough stock to fulfill demands. Adding an OMS tackles both problems.

You can better forecast top- and high-selling seasons, popular products, and buying trends. You’ll be able to pinpoint precisely how much warehouse space you’ll need for your products, always having the right amount of inventory at any given time.
Single source of truth. Your OMS dashboard will have all the information you need to track your business and sales. Combining accounting, inventory, and customer information, you’ll be able to build new strategies efficiently.
Ease of scale and multichannel opportunities. As your business continues to grow, having an order management system that can grow alongside your company is crucial. In becoming a multichannel operation, you’ll need to track orders as their fulfillment becomes complicated—customer traffic flows through multiple channels. You’ll need to follow orders through a range of marketplaces and websites. An OMS can centralize those orders, track its data, update inventory, and order routing.

The OMS step-by-step process

Most order management systems follow a six-step process to help accurately and quickly process and fulfill customer orders. This process thrives on ensuring you’re meeting all of your customer’s needs while offering customers a ubiquitous yet personal user experience. The six steps are:

Discovery
The first step of your order management process comes from the customer. Whether through your online shop, a third-party website, or over the phone, the customer will place your product in an online cart and immediately adjust your current inventory. The system can also alert you if the item is simply in the cart or if it the customer abandoned it.
Order placement
After your customer decides to purchase the product, the OMS communicates with your accounting or financial team to verify credit card payment information and process the order. Once the order is approved, it’ll be routed to fulfillment.

Wholesale or business-to-business sellers can choose an invoice model, opting to receive a quote first for bulk purchases. Then, they’re sent an invoice to be paid by a specific deadline.
Order fulfillment
Once the order arrives at the warehouse, your OMS will choose its closest or most accessible option in proximity to the order destination, then calculate shipping costs and quickest carriers. An OMS might be able to help print shipping labels, packing slips, and receipts.
Warehouse management
Having a SKU and barcode for every item will be crucial in this step. If a product has both, it increases the fulfillment accuracy and makes it easier for your warehouse to scan your product and add it to the order. There are four methods to picking items from your warehouse:

Single order. Items from a single order are picked and delivered to the packing station.

Batch picking. A picker is assigned a certain number of orders in a single round to pull and bring back to the packing station.

Zone picking. Each picker gets a designated warehouse zone, and the items in those zones are added to an order as they pass through each.

Wave picking. All zones are picked simultaneously and brought to a single spot for consolidation.

If an item is out of stock, your OMS can communicate with your vendors and suppliers to send a replenished supply to the warehouse in advance. Creating a reorder point keeps your inventory consistently stocked. It’ll automatically place a new purchase order when it hits the low threshold while also alerting warehouse managers of the possible delay in fulfillment.

The order is also sent to your accounting department or alerts your accounting software to the new purchase. A solid financial management solution makes it easy for monthly and end-of-year auditing, taxes, and more.
Shipping
Once the order has been selected from the products in your warehouse, your packing team will retrieve the items from your warehouse and scan them for inventory purposes. Next, they’ll pick, pack, and ship your product from the details your OMS provided. Three things to consider in your packing efforts are:

Order accuracy. Ensure each item is in its correct order.

Box size. Plan to incorporate dimensions into your prices. Having three to five standard box sizes helps keep costs down without overcomplicating your process.

The proper packaging. Some packing material may have better protection for your product but might cost more. Choose the right kind that is both cost-effective and ensures a safe journey.

Tracking. Your OMS can also send the customer a notification that their product has shipped and estimated arrival times. You and the customer are able to track the product from its initial shipment in your warehouse to its destination.
Post-sales follow up

After the product has left your warehouse and the designated time after the shipment’s arrival, the OMS should automatically send an email to the customer asking to rate the product and ensure everything in their order was received. This follow-up should also entail detailed instructions on contacting customer service.

If you have an unsatisfied customer, an efficient return and refund policy and instructions should be easy to find and follow. An OMS can quickly process a refund request and communicate with the accounting team to process the refund. Your OMS can also connect to your returns provider to ensure all your data is accurate and updated.

There are also instances where your OMS can flag special orders—whether they are return replacements, thank you gifts, or VIP orders. When these orders are processed through the system, your OMS can flag them with a unique code, allowing your customer retention team to track for accuracy personally.

Challenges of order management systems

If your business isn’t large enough or doesn’t have enough orders to support implementing an OMS, adding this type of platform could be too time-consuming or expensive. Before you add this system to your process, learning about the possible obstacles ahead could be beneficial for your team and the business. Some challenges that might occur within the order management process are:

Complications in implementation. Adding a new system to your process—on top of the legacy solutions you’ve already implemented—can feel complicated and overwhelming.
Price Ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, there are plenty of order management systems to choose from—and expensive doesn’t always mean best. If your business can’t afford a comprehensive ERP system, focus on adding a more robust operations system.
Making the right choice. There are so many order management systems available that it can be challenging to decide which will work with all of your needs. By going through your checklist and placing your must-have items in a hierarchy with your nice-to-have items, you’ll be able to see which OMS would be the best fit for your business.

Deciding on an OMS suitable for your business takes time and buy-in from many of your teammates. In order to make sure you choose an OMS that works for everyone, you’ll need to ask questions to find what works best for your team.

Volume of orders
Number of SKUs
Existing software of hardware
Details on your training and enablement process
Your implementation transition timeline

Finally, evaluate and compare. You may have several vendors on your list with various proposals. You’ll need to decide if your OMS is a single software solution or several tools and processes. You’ll also need an OMS that connects e-commerce with customer support so they’re able to access your automated customer service. You’ll want to curate a unified digital experience on a premium platform using the latest technology. Some questions you can ask yourself in making your decision are if each system:

Eliminates manual processes through automated workflows?
Supports multiple warehouse locations?
Provides real-time inventory updates?
Adds new feature functionality?
Provides reporting and forecasting to better identify problems and anticipate change?
Manages sales across multiple channels, currencies, and geographies?

Getting the most out of your newest software is the ultimate goal for you and your team. While you might not find a single order management solution that fits every bullet point of your criteria, you’ll learn what you need for the lifespan of your business. Deciding on the best OMS solution for your team will help take your order fulfillment and business operations to the next level.

Choosing Dynamics 365 as your next OMS

For any expanding business, implementing an OMS that seamlessly integrates with your current processes is the next step for building and retaining your customer base.

Allowing customers to see your inventory in real time and the ability to safely and securely order through a secure payment process are the most crucial elements of your e-commerce. A fast and reliable order management system that allows businesses to sell on multiple channels, as well as generates automatic sales orders, should be a part of any marketing and sales strategy. The right order management system can help you achieve a cohesive ordering and purchasing experience by proactively orchestrating your order fulfillment efforts and optimizing order flows.

A solution like Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management will help you scale your operations with ease while gaining real-time insights that help manage every aspect of your order lifecycles. By providing greater flexibility, transparency, and on-time delivery with your next order management system, your business can ensure a positive customer experience every time.

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