The Three Key Signs You Need A New OMS

Very often an Order Management System (OMS) is the beating heart of an omnichannel retailer. Playing a large part in order fulfillment and inventory management, it has the potential to make you the perfect fit for customers looking for an exceptional experience.

But it’s a double-edged sword. Pick the wrong OMS and it’s going to create extra work for your team – and could even lead you to fall short of your customers’ expectations. Knowing when to upgrade and what to do is critical.

Starter For ThreeThis isn’t an exhaustive list, but for the most part, these are going to be the first things to watch out for when it comes to knowing if you’ve got the right OMS in place. These indicators not only highlight inefficiencies and reasons to make a change, but they’re also opportunities for significant improvement in how your company manages orders, interacts with customers, and handles inventory.

You’re Drowning In Manual Tasks

Are your teams bogged down by manual processes like order entry, inventory checks, handling returns, and general data management? Have you hired people to ‘just’ handle these types of tasks? It’s not uncommon for omnichannel retailers without the right tools to have this overheard as part of their business. The problem is that all this manual work is prone to error and unfulfilling for your team. Beyond that, that team likely has a bunch more skills you could be tapping into.

A good OMS should guarantee real-time updates and accurate stock information. It should also streamline inventory management, making it more efficient and less prone to errors. Automatic returns processing is also possible with the right OMS:  it doesn’t have to be a pipe dream.

You’re Having Trouble Scaling

Growth is great, provided it’s manageable. More sales, more orders, and more things to juggle on the backend (while making it look seamless to any customer looking in)is a challenge. If you’re omnichannel or interested in scaling to that point, you’re going to be tacking on more and more channels to continue your expansion. This is often where businesses falter. While each channel has its own requirements, not every channel will integrate directly with your systems. This is bound to create a lot of extra manual work which, as we’ve already discussed, is also a problem.

Again, a good OMS will make the integration of as many channels as you have your sights on viable. Scale tends to create bottlenecks in data management so understanding the flow of data through your systems is a critical part of implementing a new OMS –so definitely have an expert on hand to help with that too.

Your OMS Is Fragile

Tech stacks rarely grow in an engineered way. It’s largely an organic process where you choose systems that fit your business today so that you can continue to be successful tomorrow. But that’s about as far as most businesses think when it comes to the longevity of software and how well it plays together. This is a risk, because what if that OMS is quite old and in a few years your supplier decides not to continue maintaining it? Or, what if because of its age, it doesn’t really integrate with modern platforms or the marketplaces you desperately want to be selling on?

The way your OMS is built and maintained should be as forward-thinking as your business is. That means it needs to be truly headless in line with MACH principles (if you don’t know what those are, find out more here). Basically, if your OMS is ancient, make the switch sooner rather than later.

What’s Next?

It never feels like a good time to overhaul the critical systems of your business. There’s always going to be disruption and new challenges to overcome when bringing in a new OMS, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. If you want to deliver a better service to a larger customer base for longer, you need an OMS that fits your business. We might be biased, but we think the best place to start is with ORP’s OMS, the perfect Omnichannel Retail Platform for any retailer looking to deliver bigger and better.

Want to see what ORP’s OMS can do for your business? Get in touch with Wolfpack today for a quick demo.

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