More Retailers to Have Single Order Management System in 3 Years: Survey

In the next three years, 250 percent more retailers will transition to a single order management system (OMS) to support a unified commerce experience across all channels, according to a survey by Boston Retail Partners (BRP), a retail management consulting firm.

BRP’s report, “Order Management is the New POS,” lists the many benefits of the change that aims to simplify operations and deliver a seamless customer experience.

BCP says this “unified commerce” initiative is the evolution of both multi-channel and omni-channel retailing to provide a seamless shopping experience whether in the store, online or anywhere customers choose to shop on their mobile devices. What is needed, the report proposes, is a unified commerce platform – a single, centralized commerce platform for all channels – combining traditional point of sale, mobile, web, clienteling, order management and fulfillment into a consolidated “real-time” platform.

“Retailers can’t afford to operate from within channel silos, and must transform their organization, business processes and technology to align with their customers,” said Ken Morris, principal, Boston Retail Partners. “With significant advancements in order management systems from several vendors, we see a convergence of OMS with traditional POS.  This convergence makes total sense, as a POS transaction is essentially just an order processed in real-time.”

BRP surveyed the top North American retailers for the study, which was sponsored by Fujitsu America, Hughes and Epicor.