In the constant battle to “delight the customer,” retailers and distributors can use distributed order management (DOM) and order management system (OMS) software to bridge the gap between their physical and digital worlds, according to a session held today at the ProMatDX trade show.
Most retailers face four main challenges in their search for success, speaker Jim Barnes, CEO of enVista, said at the show: inconsistent service, inconsistent product offerings, inconsistent pricing, and a lack of visibility into orders and customer information.
Exacerbating those issues, Covid-19 has forced consumers to become “channel agnostic” as they live in a digitalized, connected, omnichannel world, constantly being trained to expect slick retail services like buy-online-ship-from-store, “endless aisle” options, and buy-online-ship-to-store, he said.
To meet those tough conditions, retailers can use OMS software as the “planning and execution engine” for their omnichannel operations, granting them visibility over the full range of inventory: what’s been allocated, what’s on order, what’s on hand, what’s been reserved, and inbound and safety stock.
Once established, that inventory data must be shared with a variety of partner platforms, such as a warehouse management system (WMS), vendors, e-commerce platforms, and third party point-of-sale operators, Barnes said.
And one more critical ingredient is labor, since retail shop employees are the workers who end up actually executing the orders than allow those omnichannel services to happen.
“The forgotten stakeholder is many times the store associate, because if the data is not intuitive and easy to use, then there’s going to be resistance,” Barnes said. “You’re asking a store associate to do something that’s moving them from a sales associate to really some form of a fulfillment or logistics person, and that isn’t necessarily an easy transition.”
