As a business involved in order fulfilment, you’re likely to have already heard of and used both order management and inventory management software. Both systems offer their own unique benefits and disadvantages to your order fulfilment processes; however these two systems often overlap in their features, which can cause difficulty when deciding which software would best suit your operational needs.
In this article, we will look at the similarities and differences of order management and inventory management software, as well as how the systems can ultimately work in tandem to streamline your processes and keep customer satisfaction at its highest.
What is Order Management Software
If you are the type of business that has a supply chain, whether that is selling directly to consumers or fulfilling orders to another business, order management software is the silver bullet to your company’s sales process. Commonly initialised to OMS, an order management software or system provides a centralised platform for orders from any channel and helps drive efficiencies from initial order creation right through to delivery of your product.
What is Inventory Management Software
Inventory management software is critical for any business that handles physical stock and gives you unrestricted visibility of stock levels and availability, it allows you to streamline the reordering process and, with effective integrations, can be tuned into other systems like accounting software to enhance all inventory-related processes across your business.
Order Management and Inventory Management Similarities
1. Better Visibility
Both inventory and order management systems provide an enhanced view on the sales process within your business. Whilst there are differences in the exact aspects of the process that these two systems focus on, both will increase the visibility your stock availability, how the stock is moving around your business and highlight any opportunities to streamline and improve your fulfilment process and more.
2. Increased Efficiency
As with any piece of software you bring into your business, it will not take you long to start seeing efficiency improvements versus paper-based or manual processes. Both systems boast automated processes, allowing you to take the strain out of constantly looking for improvements – rules-based approaches for both inventory and order operations allow you to speed up despatch processes, apply triggers based on delivery options or parcel weight and update stock levels in real-time.
3. Integrations
No doubt you will already have a plethora of other systems across your business, all providing value to distinct functions. Having the ability to integrate your accounting, courier, marketplace or shopping carts with your order management or inventory system gives you the ability to manage so much more from one centralised platform with a single login. If you are looking to save both time and money, then this full supply chain view is invaluable.
Order Management and Inventory Management Differences
1. Customer Satisfaction vs Internal Processes
As mentioned, there are some crossovers in terms of the data you can see in both systems such as stock levels, but a key difference between the two is the key focus – an OMS aims to drive customer satisfaction throughout the entire sales process from payment to shipping and customer comms whereas the key objective of inventory management software is to ensure the right amount of product is in the right place, at the right time.
2. Present vs Future
As mentioned above, the part of the process each system is involved in has a slight difference. While order management systems are concentrating on the here and now in terms of how each order is processed, picked, packed, and shipped. An inventory management system however straddles both the present and the future through handy tools such as purchasing and forecasting, ensuring you have enough stock to meet customer demand, especially through peak trading periods.
How Inventory and Order Management Software can work together
So, whether you’re looking to improve the order process, inventory management or both there are solutions in the market that can help enhance your business, and there’s no reason you should be limited to choosing one or the other. Finding a solution that can do both could well be the key to providing the holy grail in terms of an order fulfilment process.
Utilising both pieces of software together in your supply chain gives you the insight needed to predict seasonal peaks and plan ahead, ensuring your most popular items are always available and you are not put in a position where out of stock orders results in cancelled orders, unhappy customers, and less money for your business.
Combining the available data from both your OMS and inventory management software can also help drive the direction of your business, helping you to identify key areas for growth, improvement, and profitability.
Mintsoft includes both order management and inventory management in one piece of software which enables you to always have a full view of your stock and orders in real-time. If you already have inventory management software in place, Mintsoft may also be able to integrate with your existing system through our range of 150+ integrations.
If you would like to see more about Mintsoft or speak to one of our team, please book a demo with one of our product experts.