From David and Mike at Ultra Commerce

With the complexities around B2B buying and order orchestration and fulfillment ever expanding, one thing remains constant: the customer experience. Your OMS plays a critical role in the customer experience from point of purchase or point of promise all the way through to delivery. Does your OMS provide an exceptional customer journey every step of the way?

The modern B2B purchase transaction involves multiple touchpoints, locations and manufacturing processes functioning in harmony to provide the buyer with what was promised when it was promised. This occurs all while maintaining visibility and consistency across various channels. It is a complicated process with many moving parts, but when executed successfully, your OMS is the star of the show.

Aggregating inventory is key in fulfilling the promise made at purchase. ATC and ATP or multi-echelon inventory networks representing both internal and external inventory must be in lockstep. Your OMS must manage data across multiple back-end ERP systems and SLAs to account accurately for on-hand inventory and procure from external inventory as needed to execute on the promise made to the customer at the point of purchase.

With your OMS, it’s not just about new channels

Is your customer experience consistent across your channels?

It’s crucial for B2B organizations to understand all their channels. Sure being ‘omnichannel’ is important but it is more complicated than that. When you account for all the channels your organization utilizes: Desktop and mobile, POS kiosks, distributors, call centers, field sellers, tablet, etc. you must ask yourself:

“Does the buyer have the same interaction and feel as important when interacting with our organization across all channels?”

The modern B2B buyer will likely utilize multiple channels throughout the purchase process. They may do initial research from mobile or desktop, then contact a field seller for more information, then after the purchase monitor delivery estimates from a wearable or tablet. Is the experience consistent? Is the information and data provided to them through each channel accurate? Are they delighted with your organization no matter what device they use to interact with you?

Your OMS is responsible for the answer being ‘yes’ to all of the above.

To learn more about the potential of your OMS, watch our recent webinar on the topic: