Retail Order Management System

An OMS ensures seamless order processing, inventory tracking, and fulfilment across multiple channels. 

If you’re in retail, you’re likely familiar with retail’s most pressing challenges—stockouts, overselling, and logistical chaos—and their costs. Using an OMS helps minimise these risks by centralising data, automating workflows, and offering real-time visibility into stock levels. 

Translation? OMS is your golden ticket to building long-term customer relationships, boosting profitability, and delivering a customer experience that modern customers expect. 

While OMS requires upfront investment, the benefits far outweigh the cost. Here’s what you can expect from an OMS: 

• Seamless omnichannel fulfilment: OMS syncs inventory across online and offline channels. This allows you to track stock availability and offer options like BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store) and ship-from-store. 

• Real-time inventory visibility: Real-time inventory tracking allows you to steer clear of stockouts and overselling.

• Foster order processing: OMS can automate almost every part of your order processing workflow, including order routing, invoicing, and fulfilment. This reduces manual errors and speeds up delivery times. 

• Enhanced customer experience: OMS gives you the capabilities needed to ensure smoother returns, exchanges, and order tracking. The result? Higher customer satisfaction and improved retention rates. 

• Reduced operational costs: Automated order routing and fulfilment based on predefined rules allow cutting down on storage, shipping, and labour costs. 

• Data-driven decision-making: An OMS with built-in analytics on sales trends, stock levels, and fulfilment efficiency helps make smarter business decisions. 

OMS delivers exceptional value, but to maximise the return on your investment, you need an OMS with an extensive feature set. Let’s talk about features you should look for when selecting an OMS. 

Multi-channel order management 

A modern customer likes options. They might browse your website, purchase from the app, and check out in-store. A retail OMS brings all orders into one centralised dashboard to ensure smooth fulfilment so you don’t have to juggle through multiple sales channels. 

Once implemented, the OMS imports orders from all sales channels—your website, marketplace accounts, social accounts, and even brick-and-mortar POS. This allows your team to view and manage orders from one place without logging into each platform separately. 

With omnichannel order management, you can: 

• Automate order management: It automates your order management workflow, including order details validation, updating stock levels, printing packing slips and labels, and selecting the best shipping carrier based on cost and delivery. 
• Minimise errors: It pulls data from all integrated sources, including your website, POS, marketplace, and social, into a centralised system. This reduces manual work and the risk of missing or duplicating orders. 
• Deliver a unified experience: Customers can get consistent services across sales channels when you use an OMS. They can start a purchase on your website via a mobile phone and switch to a desktop when they’re home without losing their cart or preferences and choose to pick up the item from the store instead of requesting delivery—all this, with zero friction. 

Stock allocation & inventory management 

Stock allocation is a critical step in preventing overselling and stockouts. There are a few moving parts involved in the stock allocation process, and to automate it, you need a reliable OMS. 

Here’s how it works: 

• Real-time stock allocation: When you receive an order—whether online, in-store, or via a marketplace—the OMS automatically reserves the required stock. It updates inventory levels to prevent multiple customers from purchasing the same item when stock is low. 
• Auto-sync with sales channels: OMS syncs inventory levels across connected sales channels to prevent overselling. 
• Multi-location inventory management: If a retailer has multiple warehouses, stores, or fulfilment centres, the OMS routes orders to the best location based on proximity, stock levels, and shipping cost. This helps optimise fulfilment speed and minimise shipping costs. 
• Over 54% of top U.S. executives are using new or enhanced fulfilment processes to improve order-processing speed. 
• Automatic replenishment alerts: Many systems allow you to set a safety stock level. Whenever the stock level hits this threshold, the system automatically triggers a replenishment alert. Some systems can even directly generate a purchase order that you can send to the supplier after approval. 

Picking and packing 

Picking and packing can be a major pain point where fulfilment slows down and errors emerge. Your OMS can eliminate errors by automatically assigning orders to warehouse staff and prioritising them based on urgency, location, or shipping method. 

Here’s an example of what the process could look like if you use an OMS: 

• Order is received: The OMS automatically categorises the order based on priority, product location, and shipping method. 
• Order is sent for picking: Warehouse staff receive digital picklists with optimised picking routes to reduce travel time. 
• Item scanned and verified: Each item is scanned to ensure accuracy and prevent mis-picks. 
• Packing begins: Once all items are picked, the system suggests appropriate packaging materials and prints shipping labels. 
• Final check and shipping: The package is verified, sealed, and handed off to the carrier, and tracking information is sent to the customer automatically. 

Looking for more insights into streamlining the picking and packing process? Read our extensive picking and packing guide. 

Shipping management 

An OMS simplifies the shipping process and offers complete transparency to customers. 

This means you’ll have fewer queries asking about order and return status, the ability to automatically choose the fastest and cheapest shipping option for your customers, and an automated process to choose the best fulfilment location based on the inventory level at your warehouse. 

Here’s an overview of what OMS can do in terms of shipping management: 

• Automatically generates shipping labels: Instead of manually logging into courier portals to book shipments, the OMS can integrate with major carriers and generate shipping labels within the system. This speeds up fulfilment and eliminates manual data entry errors. 
• Intelligently select shipping rate: Some customers want fast delivery, while others want to minimise the shipping cost. While customers always have the option to choose a preferred method, the OMS can find the best shipping method to optimise for both cost and speed. 

If a customer in Manchester places an order, and the nearest warehouse is in Birmingham, the OMS might compare the following options: 

• • DPD Next Day: £6.50, arrives the next working day. 
  • Royal Mail 24 Tracked: £4.95, arrives in 1-2 days. 
  • Evri Standard: £3.50, arrives in 2-3 days.

• Centralise tracking information: OMS keeps track of all shipping and tracking information in one place. This eliminates the need to switch between courier websites to find tracking numbers. All tracking numbers are stored centrally and can be accessed instantly. 
• Handle return and reverse logistics: Shipping doesn’t end at delivery. Returns are part of the shipping process. A good OMS makes return shipping just as seamless, tracking return shipments and updating inventory once items are received back in the warehouse. 

Integrations 

Integrations allow the OMS to exchange data with other apps in your tech stack. This exchange of data supports process automation. Let’s look at a few examples of why integrations are vital: 

• Connects sales channels and couriers: OMS consolidates orders from all sales channels into one dashboard. This requires integrating the OMS with your sales channels, such as Amazon, social media, or POS at your physical stores. If it’s integrated with major shipping carriers, the OMS can also provide tracking numbers and find the best option to optimise delivery speed and shipping cost. 
• Syncs with warehouse and inventory management systems: When OMS is integrated with inventory and warehouse management systems, you get: 
  • Real-time stock updates across locations 
  • Automated stock allocation based on sales velocity, warehouse proximity, and shipping costs 
  • Efficient picking and packing with barcode scanning and optimised picking routes 
• Automates various financial tasks: Integrating the OMS with your accounting or ERP system like QuickBooks or Xero helps automatically sync order details, invoices, and payment records. You’ll rarely have to manually enter sales and inventory-related financial data, meaning there’s a lower chance of errors. 
• Helps improve customer experience: When you integrate the OMS with your CRM or customer support software such as Gorgias or Zendesk, you can share real-time order tracking and updates with customers and quickly process cancellations, returns, and refunds. 

Returns management 

The best way to manage returns? Designing a returns process with a focus on customer experience. 

While each OMS has its unique capabilities, here’s an example of how the returns management process might look when you use an OMS: 

• Handling product returns and logging reasons: A modern OMS allows customers to initiate returns via self-service portals or the customer service team while also logging the reason for the return. This data helps identify patterns, allowing you to potentially address the most common causes of returns. 
• Stock reallocation: Not all returned items are faulty. A smart OMS automatically categorises returned goods based on condition. Damaged items go into a separate workflow for disposal or supplier claims, and resellable products are instantly put back into circulation. 
• Refunds and exchanges: An efficient and transparent refund and exchange process is key to maintaining customer trust. To make your refunds and exchanges frictionless, you must integrate your OMS with other tools. 
• For example, integrating it with your payment processor can help automate refunds based on your refund policy. Integrating it with your inventory management software helps the OMS allocate replacement stock and generate a new order to ensure faster turnaround times for exchange requests. 
• Reverse logistics: Reverse logistics are a whole lot easier if you’ve integrated your OMS with shipping carriers because it allows the OMS to automatically generate labels, track packages, and streamline warehouse processes. 

Reporting 

Gut instinct can only get you so far. The key to long-term success in modern retail is data-backed decisions, and that’s where an OMS can help. 

A retail OMS collects, organises, and presents data visually to give you a real-time view of your business. The best systems on the market include customisable dashboards and automated reports that make it easier to track performance and identify inefficiencies. 

For example, you could create a custom dashboard to track: 

• Speed to dispatch: Track the time from order placement to shipment to ensure you meet customer expectations for fast delivery. 
• Cost per order: Calculate the cost of each fulfilled order in terms of labour, packaging, and shipping to identify room for cost reduction. 
• Staff productivity per operative: Measure the warehouse team’s efficiency in picking, packing, and shipping orders to optimise workforce performance. 

Mintsoft is a cloud-based OMS. It’s designed to streamline and automate order fulfilment processes for retailers, warehouses, and 3PL providers. 

It integrates with over 100 couriers and over 150 ecommerce platforms and marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, WooCommerce, and Shopify. 

Want to speed up deliveries and make them more cost-effective? Mintsoft can automate picking and packing and shipping processes and minimise errors, improve efficiency, and help you gain greater control over costs. 

The system includes built-in reporting and analytics tools that provide real-time insights into stock levels, order fulfilment performance, staff productivity, and more. If you’re looking to tap into data to make smarter decisions, Mintsoft is the perfect tool for you. 

Here are the key features you get as a Mintsoft user: 

• Multi-channel order management 
• Stock allocation and inventory management 
• Picking and packing automation 
• Shipping management 
• Seamless integrations 
• Reporting and analytics 

If you’re curious about how Mintsoft can transform your order management processes, speak to an expert today to learn more.