Electronic Order Management: Scope and Challenges of Implementing an Order Management System

An Electronic Order Management system is meant toforecasts based on customer inventory data.
eliminate delays, errors and costs associated withBetter planning can reduce instances of costly
manual order management processes. Automatingdemand-supply mismatches. Planning business
order generation, sending, receiving andprocesses like customer order management and
acknowledging of orders can cut administration costs,preparing for change order management gets easier
reduce overheads and improve supply chainwith real time access to up to minute inventory data
efficiency.that foretells supply demand. This puts more control
Incompatible ERP/Inventory management systems atand responsibility on the suppliers and buyers can
buyer and vendor facilities is the first electronic orderavoid labour intensive purchasing processes. On
management challenge to tackle. An on demand webdemand order management solution is configured to
order management solution can sidestephandle end-to-end order management workflows,
incompatibilities of enterprise systems.purchase orders, advance ship notices, receipts and
A hosted order management software or orderinvoices.
management service allows sending and receivingDifferences in procurement demand by different
data with a standard web browser and allowsdepartments of same organization coupled with
retrieving data in popular formats like XML, CSV ordisconnected ERP systems add up procurement
spreadsheets. On demand order management servicecosts for the whole organization. Configure business
takes data in any format and delivers it in real timerules for individual procurement processes and let the
to relevant persons in any format they require. Thusorder management service take over the processes
both the supplier and buyer can benefit from realbased on min-max settings.
time communication, even while not waiting forImplementation of On-Demand Order Management
emails, phone calls or faxes.System
Disconnected enterprise systems create dataOn demand order management system is hosted
redundancy, errors and can lead to costly businessorder management solution that requires no additional
inefficiencies. Poor coordination between enterpriseIT infrastructure investment by either parties -
systems leads to flawed production plans, increasedsupplier and buyer. The order management solution
supply chain pressure and poor customer service.provider charts out a well laid out implementation plan
Lack of visibility of orders, schedules and shipmentsafter identifying existing business challenges and
can lead to costly administrative decision makingpossible cost/time savings of implementing a web
processes.order management solution. On demand electronic
An on demand order management service facilitatesorder management solution requires the business to
single point availability of total supply chain informationpay only monthly subscriptions charges. No hefty
in real time. This can lead to better coordination in thelicensing or upkeep costs. Employees can be trained
whole supply chain and overall time and cost savings.on the system in less than four hours.
Stock outs, expedited orders and bloated inventoryImplementation takes less than six weeks and most
are better avoided with proper order managementof the time is utilized for uploading the data to a
process. The supplier also needs to have significantcentralised location, defining business goals and testing
visibility into supply chain status and inventory statusthe effectiveness of deployment.
at customer level. This facilitates accurate demand