9 Reasons to Switch OMS Vendors

There are various reasons why a retailer or logistics company realises that their current Order Management System (OMS) software isn't quite serving their needs.

It's a tough choice to make. But sometimes you have to face reality and switch OMS vendors to ensure the success and future of your company.

In this article we will discuss some of those  reasons that make it absolutely clear that you have to switch OMS Vendors. So if you recognize many of these problems in your business, you might have to consider making this switch in your company as well.

1. Lack of integration with other platforms

A core strength of OMS is that it's able to act as a centralised hub from where you can control and monitor the entire order fulfilment process—from the moment you take up new inventory, until the point you deliver the product at a customers doorstep, to offering after-sales support.

This power can only be unleashed if the program is able to share information with your other technology platforms—for example your point of sale (POS) system, your inventory and warehousing management systems, your eCommerce platform, as well as your accounting software.

It's extremely frustrating if the OMS platform is able to receive data from the rest of your technology stack, but is unable to share data back to your other technology platforms. This means that there's no bidirectional sync between the OMS and the rest of your technology stack.

Another variant of this problem is that syncing with your other tech platforms is unreliable, inconsistent, or slow.

Another problem that many of the big retailers experienced with their OMS software, is that it doesn't support EDI—Electronic Data Interchange. This is a standardised protocol to sync data with external business partners.

This might be important for your companies if you need tight integration between your inventory and order fulfilment processes, and your extended supply chain partners.

If this is an essential feature that your company needs to manage its supply chain and process orders, it might be a dealbreaker for you.

2. Unstable and buggy workarounds

Often the only solution for syncing problems between the OMS and your other technology platforms, is to try to find workarounds—other software packages that are enabled to bridge the gap between your OMS and other tech platforms.

If those are unavailable, you have to employ software developers to do this work for you. The problem is that it opens the way for serious errors and bugs to affect your data.

Often when the OMS vendor releases a software update, those workarounds will break. Which means that you will have to survive on older, unupdated software until your developers have updated their workarounds to work with the new system.

What it means in practice is that many OMS implementations never get updated. This has serious consequences for both the security and functionality   of the software and limits the usefulness of the OMS platform.

3. Weak support from the OMS vendor

This is another problem that can have serious consequences for your company. There are many ways that an OMS vendor fails to give proper support to their clients.

Firstly, if the OMS isn't properly documented, or if the software documentation is weak.

It's often assumed by vendors that their  customers will figure out how to use their product and solve most of their system problems without any direct help from the vendor. But if the system documentation is unclear,  incomplete, or even inaccurate, it becomes almost impossible for the retailer to get the most benefit from their software.

What also happens is that the customer service department of the vendor is unresponsive, is not available when you need help, or aren't knowledgeable enough of the product or competent enough to solve your problems.

As the vendor's customer, you have the right to have your problems and inquiries addressed in an expedited, professional, and competent manner.

If the documentation is useless and the vendor is unable to provide proper personal support, what option do you have but to switch to another vendor?

4. Difficult and complicated implementation

The OMS package will never function properly unless it's correctly deployed in your business.

Any good OMS package should be straightforward to implement in your business. This doesn't mean that you won't have to go through several steps to deploy the software in your business. But the vendor should make it as simple and straightforward for you to achieve.

They should also be able to give you a clear indication of the implementation timeline before you buy their product.

Deploying an OMS in a business isn't limited to the  technological problems of setting up the software and assembling the right hardware to run the system. Your staff members also need to be trained to use the problem.

If the OMS vendor doesn't provide adequate tools or services to train your staff in using the platform, you will never gain the full benefit of the software.

5. Incomplete feature set

What often happens is that the OMS package fulfils most of your needs at first. But then later down the line you discover a couple of essentially features that are not supported by the software.

The question becomes: how essential is that feature to your daily operations—and can you live without that feature?

One feature that many companies have come to depend on, is the ability to bring product information directly into the system with barcode scanning.

Some warehouse management platforms require barcoding scanning to function. So if your OMS package doesn't provide this function, you will have to turn to another vendor for this feature.

Which means you add yet another technology integration to your technology stack, with more technology to support, subscriptions to pay for, and bugs to iron out.

Barcode scanning is an incredible time saver—and one that many companies find is important enough to switch to an alternate OMS vendor to get.

Another feature that is very useful to retailers is the system is able to customise shipping options and automatically compare shipping rates before sending out an order to be fulfilled.

It's incredibly useful if the OMS offers customizable shipping options and automations. For example, in some instances the retailer might want to use the fastest courier service, and sometimes they want to use the least expensive one—depending on the customer's needs.

The OMS should allow you to choose the shipping option that is the most appropriate for that particular transaction. Or better yet, the OMS should automatically route the order to the courier that is the most appropriate for each situation.

Another example is the ability of some OMS platforms to check the address and other information of a client when it's entered into the system to verify its accuracy.

If the wrong information is entered, the OMS should notify you that there's a problem. If it doesn't, the order will be shipped out to a non-existent address—and the shipping team and customer will be confused as to what happened to the order.

Another functionality that is crucial for some retailers, is the ability to offer product variations such as size and colour to their customers. If the OMS fails to support this feature, it might be a dealbreaker to industries  with specifically customer selectable product options such as the clothing industry.

If the OMS doesn't have those specific features that you need in your business, it will put a serious strain on your daily operations.

The software may also have the opposite problem: a certain feature is so complicated and bloated that it becomes difficult to use. Which means it becomes no use to you at all.

6. The vendor is slow to add functionality

The lack of a certain feature that you might need in your OMS might not be a problem if the vendor is willing to add the features in a future update.

But if you keep on requesting a feature set that keeps being left out of updates, you might have to seriously consider switching to a platform that has all the tools you need to make it a success.

If the developer is slow to add and refine features and provide regular software updates, the software might not grow with your company. Which means you will have to consider switching to a different vendor in the near future.

What's often the case is that the specific feature you requested is not something that will be useful to the wider platform user base. So the vendor has no incentive to spend the time and resources to implement this feature—even though it might have to potentially considerably improve your business operations and profitability.

7. Insufficient customizability

Many OMS packages work fine "out of the box". But once the customer starts using it, they're frustrated to find that there's no way to configure or customise the standard feature set to fit their workflows better.

For example, some OMS packages come with pre-programmed settings on how it handles demand forecasting and inventory management.

If the retailer has better models and algorithms for predicting their future inventory needs, they won't be able to implement their versions in the system. This can be a serious problem for some retailers—especially ones that experience considerable fluctuations in their sales volumes.

Another problem is if the system is unable to produce shipping labels or invoices that comply with the rest of your branding or business operation specifications due to a lack of customizability.

Customised invoices and shipping labels adds a level of sophistication and personalization to your order fulfilment processes—which is something many companies refuse to live without.

8.  The software is artificially limited

There are various ways that an OMS package works fine in its basic implementation, but lacks certain features that a retailer might feel is essential to their daily operations. Some OMS packages are even artificially limited by the vendor to incentivize customers to upgrade to more expense options.

For example, if a retailer wants to start supporting more advanced shipping options such as multi-package orders, in-store fulfilment or even pick-up fulfilment, and the software is unable to accommodate these options.

These features are competitive advantages for retailers that are able to provide them to their customers.

So if the retailer wants to provide these options,  these transactions have to be processed by hand—which raises costs and considerably slows down your order processing times.

9. The Software is buggy or incomplete

Sometimes the OMS just doesn't function properly due to bugs that keep unresolved through several update cycles.

An example here is if the OMS doesn't provide other means to access data or make changes to the system than the main dashboard.

It might not be useful to the order fulfilment workflow of a company to conduct all of the data processing and input activities from a desktop.

Most companies want their staff to be able to access order and inventory information when they move around the company's warehouses or store floor. This is why many companies distribute touchscreen devices to their team members where they can access the OMS system from an app.

But if the company provides no app, it can seriously hamper the workflow of those companies.Other OMS vendors purport to offer a website through which the OMS can be accessed. But then it turns out that the website is buggy, feature poor, or unresponsive.

A vendor should provide alternate means to access their platform, either through a good website or an app. If the vendor doesn't provide this basic functionality, it might be reason enough for some retailers to switch to a competing OMS platform.

Conclusion

In this article we considered a series of problems that some companies are starting to experience with their current OMS setup—problems that become serious enough that they start seriously to consider moving to a competitor's platform.

As you go through this list, measure your own company's experience with your current OMS offering against these problems. If you experience several of these problems in your own setup, you might have to consider switching OMS vendors as well. You need to decide which of these factors, or what combination of these factors, are deal breakers for your particular circumstances.

When you study this list of problems, it will also help you to decide what types of features are essential for your company and your particular setup. This is a tremendous help when you evaluate other OMS offerings in the market.

This is an important decision to make. If you make the right choice, you  have the opportunity to make a change in your business operations that can have a positive impact on your company's success for a considerable period of time.