Focus on situation and flexibility – why the architecture landscape is not up to the new omnichannel requirements
Although we are positioning ourselves in the B2B business with diselva, we have a good insight into the B2C retail world through our experience and current projects. In addition, our B2B customers also have B2C retail challenges in parts of their business and we are confronted with the same processes and systems through these projects.
What we can observe up and down the country is that many retailers are having a hard time with the increased consumer demands for cross-channel ordering and delivery. Today’s consumers, for example, want to buy product X in a physical store and take it home right away … and a suitable product Y, which is still available in another store, also pay immediately and have it delivered to your home.
The classic “buy online and pick up in your favorite store” is also a popular option – regardless of whether the store or online shop has the product in stock.
These are just two examples of many omnichannel processes that are becoming more and more natural for customers, but in the background represent a huge challenge for retailers.
The simple reason: The existing back-end systems (referred to in the graphic as “ERP & CRM”) are not fundamentally designed for the interaction of a large number of new channels with a wide variety of requirements. As classic “Systems of Record” according to Gartner’s Pace Layered Architecture, these are designed for solid core processes and data management. This means that they are almost by definition sluggish and not flexible enough to meet the requirements of the overarching processes of online and POS. Somehow, in the past, one process after the other was relatively static in the combination of online shop and ERP and all employees were trained in the processing … but the whole thing is very far from flexible and efficient handling.
Incidentally, the necessary renewal of the system landscape in the direction of the cloud does not solve this problem either. Even with the complex migration to e.g. SAP S4/Hana plus the evaluation of a new eCommerce solution, which at its core offers a modern MACH architecture, the required omnichannel coverage has not come a significant step closer.
A “new type” of Order Management Systems (OMS) provides a remedy, which essentially meets the following requirements:
- Customer Order Management
- Order Lifecycle Management – Management of individual orders from order placement to after-sales services
- Returns Refunds – Returns Logistics Handling
- Inventory Availability
- Inventory visibility – Aggregated view of inventory across all sources
- Inventory Controls – Adding Control Points to Inventory Management
- Pre-orders and backorders (preorders backorders) – Handling of pre-orders and backorders from customers
- Multichannel Fulfillment
- Fulfillment Optimization – Management of business and fulfillment logic by means of configuration
- Store Fulfillment – Optimize order routing and enable flexible fulfillment options
- Point of Sale Support
- POS Consulting App – Overview of relevant information on products and customers including intuitive usability in the consulting context – with little training for the store staff
- Customer Service Support
- Cart Order Support – overview and intervention in shopping carts and existing orders (up to the definition of the order status)
These order management systems position themselves exactly between the ERP system and the eCommerce solution. But beware, not all OMS is the same – this naming stands for both very old-fashioned ERP parts and state-of-the-art software, the possibilities of which bring tears to your eyes with joy.
Implementing flexible use cases like the following is becoming very difficult with the current ERP:
- The consumer needs two more items in the store that are not available on site, which he would like to have sent to his home.
- These two items are also not available in the online shop, but they are available in exactly the desired combination in three other stores.
- The order will be made available in the OMS for clearance in other stores and the three possible stores for clearance will be informed.
- The stores can “claim” the order, pack it and ship it.
- If there is an “unclaim”, this has an impact on the future quality ranking of the store, which can be taken into account in the flexible distribution of the order.
The next parts of the series will highlight: