This blog is co-authored by Nina Seth, Product Marketing Director, and Sumit Mittal, Product Director – Commerce Solutions
It goes without saying that COVID-19 changed the face of retail and how we shop. E-commerce was rapidly growing prior to the pandemic, but this transformative event created an inflection point. The pandemic pushed even more U.S. consumers online, contributing an additional $105 billion in U.S. online revenue in 2020 and accelerating e-commerce by two years, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates.[1]
As customers rushed online, businesses of all sizes faced the challenge of keeping up. Not all businesses had invested in technologies supporting a digital transformation. Many scrambled to implement online shopping, curbside, and buy online pick-up in store (BOPIS) to meet customer demand for speed and convenience options. And once they offered these new options, many couldn’t fulfill products on-time. Even e-commerce powerhouses saw shipping delays.
The last 15 months have shown us that consumer expectations have completely changed. Shoppers want seamless, personalized and accurate customer-centric experiences across channels. Consumers want to quickly see what’s available and where, how it can be fulfilled, when they can get it, along with continuous and accurate updates about their order. With high expectations and alternatives at consumers’ fingertips, businesses need to invest in the right e-commerce technologies to retain customers. Store and brand loyalty are out, while accurate inventory, speed and convenience are in.
Traditional OMS Creates Pitfalls
Many businesses have relied on traditional order management solutions (OMS); however, OMS’s aren’t nimble, require a system overhaul and can take years to implement. These monolithic solutions aren’t built to scale to support e-commerce and don’t offer the flexibility businesses need to rapidly scale up or down with consumer demand.
Often an OMS is not properly connected to other systems leading to pitfalls for both retailer and end-customers alike. Without a single record for orders, a customer can end up receiving different messaging. For example, a customer placing an order could see one message on the website showing delivery in 5 to 7 business days, and then the order confirmation email could provide completely different information. And the actual delivery time could be different than the website and the confirmation message. For businesses looking to address pain points today, a traditional OMS won’t solve problems in time nor support their digital transformation.
Flexible Order Services Keep Businesses Competitive
This is where having the right order management/order service comes in. In the increasingly complex world that spans multiple channels (stores, digital storefronts, marketplaces, call centers), organizations need nimble order services solutions that can help orchestrate orders from click to customer regardless of how products are fulfilled. The best order services solutions track orders across channels and enable businesses to deliver on the promise to customers. Being able to quickly implement order services capabilities can mean the difference between staying competitive by offering accurate inventory visibility and fulfillment options versus flying blind for another 12-18 months.
Many organizations have started their modernization journey and are looking to supplement their current implementation, while others have just embarked on their digital transformation and need new capabilities to drive modernization in their organization. Regardless of the scenario, Blue Yonder now offers a robust order services solution to address these requirements.
Blue Yonder’s Order Services and Customer Order Visibility
Blue Yonder’s new Order Services microservice, along with proactive actionable insights from Customer Order Visibility (COV), provides fulfillment transparency to businesses and their customers by managing orders across geographies, brands and channels, utilizing modern fulfillment options such as ship from store, BOPIS, curbside, and same-day delivery. This microservice enables businesses to manage and orchestrate orders seamlessly across internal and external services, which ensures a single source of truth for all order transactions and provides visibility at each step of the order lifecycle to ensure order and fulfillment accuracy. Details of all orders are then available in one place for staff to check and update order status and for customers to understand when they can expect their order.
Blue Yonder’s Order Services is a highly performant and scalable API-based microservice that can be surgically added into a business’s existing systems and takes only months to deploy. For organizations looking at time to value, Blue Yonder’s service can quickly address immediate requirements and grow with the business. It allows organizations to modernize their tech stack while using the systems in place. And since the solution is designed to address the needs of organizations driving digital transformation, it’s built for internet scale. Along with our microservice, our team of industry experts help scope and design implementations that drive organization’s e-commerce growth to provide ROI.
Order Services and COV give retailers the right capabilities and insights to deliver on their promise to customers. Serving customers today requires being nimble. Customers want to shop in the way that’s most convenient to them. Regardless of how customers shop, retailers need technologies that help them seamlessly manage orders from click to customer.
Learn how Blue Yonder can help you here.
[1] https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/coronavirus-impact-online-retail/
