You may have held off purchasing an order management system because you have concerns about how to integrate it with all your other system. You have EDI demands from large customers, meanwhile your suppliers and third party logistics suppliers use very different systems, and you’re just not sure at all how your back office accounting system fits into all of this as well. You probably need to better understand exactly what order management systems can do.
What Order Management Systems Can Do
Order management software becomes the hub in your order management and inventory and receivables system. Its spokes are EDI which integrate it with third party logistics companies, suppliers and customers. They can also connect in your ecommerce platform, retail units, your accounting software and non-EDI orders. Software providers are developing order management systems which have the ability to share data across multiple platforms, connecting to each third party accurately so that data is shared.
Advantages of Order Management Systems
The main advantage of an order management system is the reduction of data entry. Previously you would have spent hours every day between your team taking an order from one system, adding it to another system, and then producing the information require for accounts to then ensure invoicing was completed, as well as sending a logistics order to your third party supplier for delivery. The order management software triggers all of these automatically as soon as the order is received from whatever channel, with no manual data entry and potentially just a check or sign off by a manager if you wish.
Order management software can produce daily reports, or weekly, and ad-hoc reports so you can monitor sales, ordering, inventory levels and thresholds. This manual check may help you to feel confident that the system is working correctly, but you will soon feel assured that the software can manage all of this for you.
Another major advantage of order management software is the integration of inventory and order data. A system order will automatically check the system for SKU availability, and then allocate that product to the order, changing quantity available status. If a re-order threshold is met, the system will automatically generate an order sent to the supplier to request more product. The further integration of a third party logistics provider can also link shipping fulfillment and provide tracking data for you and the end customer.
Adding in Drop Ship Suppliers
Order management software can be expanded to include drop ship software. This allows you to connect to your current suppliers and new drop ship suppliers and integrate their systems so that your customers product orders can be fulfilled by your supplier directly, taking you out of the loop. This results in faster delivery to the end customer. But more importantly it allows you to exponentially expand your product line, without concerns regarding warehouse space and logistics.
By implementing order management software and drop ship software your grown strategy can be developed incredibly, and you will reap the benefits.