Order Management: 5 Mistakes To Avoid

Order Management is a process in which customers and final buyers are not usually involved in. However, it can become your customers’ focus when things break down and don’t go as planned.

Making mistakes with your Order Management process can lead to dissatisfied customers, and this can affect all the work put into your supply chain planning. Before sorting begins, it’s important to make sure that the problem didn’t stem from previous processes. What’s the best way to monitor the order management process? Let’s take a look:

Inventory Problems  

A poorly managed inventory can lead to economic losses, either due to stock outs, damaged stock or unrecorded returns. This can also generate warehouse space that, sooner or later, will turn into time lost during inventory management.  

Solving this dilemma requires direct communication and reporting with inventory data, together with an order management system that allows data updating on a constant basis. You’ll also need to train staff to follow a controlled inventory management process.  

Inefficient Order Preparation  

A customer purchases a product, you generate the order but for some reason, the team in charge of orders doesn’t prepare it on time and the customer receives it late (or doesn’t receive it, period). You generate unnecessary logistics costs while your customer misses out on a positive shopping experience.  

This is a communication issue, solvable with a well-defined process and a proper management system where all order management areas can work in sync to receive, prepare and release orders in a timely manner.  

Data Errors 

Any Order Management system or platform that has data errors (or data gaps) in order size, status, location and delivery can quickly become obsolete. Without accurate use of this data, a proper order fulfillment lifecycle cannot be guaranteed. 

It’s important for the order management system to be properly integrated with any and all systems that provide this information, whether it be an ERP or CRM system, an e-commerce portal or even an Excel sheet.   

Poorly Managed Order Picking 

In addition to data errors, errors in the number of units that may or may not be shipped can generate time delays for product delivery.  

Oftentimes, this task is left to operators to handle manually, with the potential for this to become a missed order. In addition, there are customers who require FTL fulfillment, which can make manual management even more difficult.  

Reviewing the order picking process and implementing it into an Order Management System will automate and speed up the assignment of units, priorities and load times, even while considering business rules such as those generated via fulfillment.  

Incorrect or Non-Existent Location 

This is about inventory issues and its potential order errors. Placing an order with incorrect or mixed reference data can cause operators to spend hours searching for an order that may have already been delivered. For this reason, it’s important that management systems avoid this type of error. Defining a well-controlled fulfillment process before time and revenue loss become a factor is key.  

There is great value in relying on systems such as UNIGIS Order Management, not only for internal management and logistics processes but also for high customer satisfaction. Achieving customer success and avoiding mishaps (even before customers notice) will help bring about a unique and excellent shopping experience.