Order management starts from the moment a customer makes a purchase on your e-commerce platforms. For small enterprises, this process might be easy and manual, from handling a handful of orders from a limited stock to manually packaging and dispatching them to their destinations. However, for larger companies with extensive customer networks and vast inventories, smoothly managing the order process can be daunting. Consequently, an order management system (OMS) is frequently utilized to guarantee that customer orders are completed with precision and efficiency.

Order management systems are crucial in shaping a brand’s customer relationships. However, with effective strategies and systems, order management can enhance customer loyalty, boost operational efficiency, and elevate revenue streams, ensuring a positive impact on the brand. Let’s have a look at how it works and why you should care about it!

What is Order Management?

An Order Management System takes care of everything after checkout, from tracking inventory to processing payments, managing customer information, and ensuring timely delivery. It’s a one-stop shop for all things order management to make the process stress-free and smooth for both customers and businesses.

In eCommerce, the post-purchase experience matters a lot in a brand’s reputation. Customers demand a seamless and transparent shopping journey from start to end. Free shipping, easy returns, and sustainable business practices make the customer happy and repeat customers.

But that’s not all!!!

Customers want complete clarity on the status of their order. Salesforce order management system can streamline the process and keep your customers coming back for more.

What is Salesforce Order Management?

Salesforce Order Management (SF OMS) is the perfect solution for you if you are tired of managing your orders manually. It’ll help you streamline your order fulfillment process from cart to delivery. SF OMS tracks every stage of the order and even handles post-delivery steps like returns and refunds.

For example, Salesforce Order Management can integrate your accounting system, ERP, payment, warehouse management, and logistics.

How To Create Better Customer Experience with Order Management?

Did you know that a premium post-purchase experience can lead to customer retention?

According to recent studies, 84% of consumers would stop buying from a retailer after just one poor delivery experience. So, it’s important to prioritize speed, transparency, and simplicity of fulfillment to keep your customers satisfied and loyal. Get it right, and they’ll reward you with more orders.

Now, let’s have a look at how a Salesforce Order Management solution can help you drive loyalty to your brand.

Provide Flexible Shipping Options

With so many advancements in the logistics industry and ecommerce these days, customers demand more flexibility in shipping and delivery services. From one-hour delivery to weekend drop-offs, the expectations are high. As a seller, it’s important for you to be upfront about shipping options.

Show your delivery services clearly on each product page so your customers know what you offer before they checkout. So, integrate the Salesforce Order Management system into your eCommerce store, or you can go for our B2C or B2B Commerce Cloud Accelerator with already integrated features that you need to satisfy your customers.

Offer Accurate Product Information

Just imagine that you’re planning a dinner party, and you’ve got your heart set on a particular ingredient. You spend hours scouring the grocery store for it, only to find out it’s out of stock.

How do you feel about it?

Of course, it’ll make you upset and frustrated! Now, don’t let your customers feel the same way. Let them know the status of your inventory upfront to save time and hassle. Inventory management capabilities within your Order Management system can help you automate the process and ensure your customers have access to the products they need.

Offer Order Tracking & Returns

Keep your customers in the loop with real-time updates on their orders. Give them the power to track their shipment status and edit shipping details hassle-free. Returns should be a piece of cake.

Let your customers print return labels and choose how and where to return items. Self-service not only puts your customers in control but also helps you reduce service and support costs. Isn’t it smart? You can make your customers and business thrive.

Empower Your Sales Reps & Service Agents to Excel

Sales reps and sales reps are the ones who make sure that everything runs smoothly. To make their job easier, they need the right tools that can help them reduce call handling time, increase efficiency, and give them complete visibility into orders.

With the right tools, they can place orders on behalf of customers and make shipping and delivery changes to existing orders when necessary.

In fact, according to the Salesforce eCommerce report, customer service is a key driver of incremental revenue for 38% of digital leaders.

Optimize Efficiency with AI & Automation

Managing inventory, orders, and returns manually can be a tedious and time-consuming process. But now, the best order management systems, like Salesforce with AI tools, can automate these tasks for you.

About one-third of the organizations have already automated their order status monitoring and reporting. With AI, you can automate processes and focus on growing your business.

What Are The Trends In Order Management That Contribute To Its Increasing Complexity?

Order management can swiftly become intricate, especially when dealing with high volumes or numerous sales and distribution channels. These trends contribute to the complexity:

Multichannel: Involves multiple physical stores or locations, online or digital platforms, and call centers for conducting business and managing orders. Each channel maintains distinct transactions and customer interactions.

Omnichannel: Enables customers to effortlessly move across channels for business transactions while organizations adapt their processes to meet customer expectations. For instance, a customer might purchase online, modify the order via a call center, and collect it from a physical store.

Advanced computerized order management systems (OMSs) have been developed to manage this increasing complexity, facilitating a more efficient and profitable order lifecycle.

How To Set Up Salesforce Order Management

You need to prepare your Salesforce organization to set up SF OMS. Let’s have a look at how you can set up Order Management with Salesforce B2C Commerce storefront:

1. Get the Org Ready for Salesforce Order Management

• Transition to Lightning Experience since Salesforce Classic lacks support.
• Choose between representing individual shoppers using Person Accounts or Standard Accounts with Contacts.
• Enable and set up multiple currencies, if necessary.
• Generate an API client ID specifically for the storefront.
• In the Setup menu, access Order Settings and configure the preferred options.
• Navigate to the Setup menu, access Order Management, and activate the toggles for Order Management, B2C Commerce, and B2C Integrations.
• Optionally enable the Optional Price Books for Order feature if needed.

2. Set Up Delivery Methods for Salesforce Management

Set up fast and easy shipping methods in your Order Management system that match the appropriate delivery methods on your storefront. OMS counts delivery changes as products, so one order delivery method record will be created for each delivery method, along with one or more product records.

If you’re using Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the storefront integration automatically creates these records. However, if you’re using a different storefront, you’ll need to implement a process to handle delivery-related charges and track everything separately.

3. Integrate Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud

Well, there is one most important thing that you can’t skip when integrating SFCC with the Order Management system, and that is contacting Salesforce Customer Support to create a case. It’s the requirement for the implementation process.

4. Create the Flows for Salesforce Order Management

Streamline your order management process with Salesforce. With its Order Management system, you can take advantage of pre-built flows to automate specific tasks or create your custom flows from scratch.

You know what’s the best part?

Salesforce provides many resources to help you customize the system to fit your unique business needs.

5. Enable the Salesforce Order Management

• Finalize by making the system production-ready and granting access to all users responsible for order management.
• Configure Order Management objects to accommodate fulfillment processes, including fulfillment types, locations, and object statuses.
• Set up payment systems and methods for handling transactions in Order Management.
• Activate Service Flows on the Order Summary Record page.
• Transfer data from the old system.
• Set up the integration between the Salesforce Commerce Cloud storefront and the Order Management System.

Conclusion

Although not so new anymore, the Salesforce Order Management system is still relatively new to the Salesforce ecosystem. It has great potential due to the strength of the Salesforce platform. You can expect to benefit from the platform’s trust, scalability, flexibility, reports, and dashboards. This saves you both integration costs and maintenance if you are already using other Salesforce Clouds.

Innovadel Technologies is a Salesforce Commerce Cloud consulting partner that knows the importance of an Order Management system for your storefront. No matter if you need B2C or B2B order management, our experts will help you implement it with SFCC. Contact us to learn more!