Smoother, Seamless, Faster: Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s New Order Management System

In the fast-paced, fluidly moving torrent of ecommerce it is fundamental to have a smooth order management system (OMS) that can deal with quantity and quality — greater numbers of customers and their greater demands and expectations. That’s why Salesforce Commerce Cloud has built their new feature (drum roll in progress…): Lightning Order Management.

Built from scratch, and designed for a customer-first approach, this out-of-the-box, SF Commerce Cloud OMS feature enables businesses to provide efficient and personalized data, including the real-time inventory status, updates on orders, and simplified returns. 

Back in the olden days of ecommerce (not so many years ago), a standard OMS would fulfill a limited and basic role: offer you shipping methods, express delivery, and an option for free returns. Well, to quote a lyrical master, “the times, they are a’changing”. Customers desire greater control and wider powers.

Once a customer clicks buy, the cogs in the order management system begin rotating, and kick into life. Yet there are intricate points of fragility here — financial systems, payment, shipping providers, customer service, order status. Maintaining a seamless and smooth process, from the moment a customer clicks buy to the time it is in their hands, is a difficult balancing act.

Lightning Order Management has three core elements. First, it enables brands to manage the order lifecycle from shopping to delivery, and makes it easier to process orders based on specific needs, like product type and location. 

Second, it connects the commerce and service experience, giving a brand the full horizon of each customer, while offering them options to check their order status, cancel or return an order in just a few clicks. This automated system speeds up the time for customers to resolve potential problems. 

And third, it provides brands with powerful drag-and-drop workflows for shipping, customer service etc., making it much simpler to manage orders without the need for code — and all the potential issues that go along with that.

SFCC’s latest feature follows the same path as the majority of plugins: birthed into existence via the research and development channel, before being adopted by platforms. For example, Twitter allows startups to use their API to discover what people wanted, and then simply built those features themselves. Likewise, Salesforce Commerce Cloud has learned what lacked in previous order management systems and developed the functionality for what is perhaps the most important aspect of ecommerce — at least logistically speaking — the order management system.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud has taken all of the clunky parts of an OMS and welded them together to create a more seamless order management system, with greater transparency around orders and greater customer control around shipment, as well as smoother automated returns and cancellation processes.

PS: UV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud dev teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.