Optimizing B2C Order Management and Fulfillment with Salesforce Order Management

Imagine a booming market expected to grow by 8% every year from 2022 to 2026. That’s the US regional market, according to recent research. And you want to be part of it. When your goal is to offer your customers the best online shopping experience possible, it is vital to ensure the presence of a few factors. Fast, reliable delivery, user-friendly and engaging platforms, and hassle-free and secure transactions create a good customer experience.

But how do you cope with the rising volume and complexity of orders that come your way? How do you ensure to satisfy your customers every time? That’s where Salesforce Commerce Cloud can help you with its powerful solution: Salesforce Order Management System.

Orders are the backbone of every business. It’s one of the effective ways to leave a lasting impression on your customers. How? They minimize the bridge between your online store and your physical fulfillment. And they are the opportunity to showcase your brand values and service quality.

That’s why you need to know more about the Salesforce Order Management System and how it can transform your order management and fulfillment processes. In this blog, we will discover the advantages and capabilities of this solution and how it can help you improve your B2C commerce operations.

Let’s get started.

What is Salesforce Order Management?

As per a study conducted by Deloitte and Salesforce, approximately 40 systems are involved in the proper order management of a brand. Keeping all these systems in sync is essential to keep the order flow uninterrupted.

On the retail forefront of a business, these systems contribute seamlessly to deliver the experience customers crave. To help enterprises manage the complete order lifecycle, Salesforce launched a cloud-based solution, Salesforce Order Management. It supports handling the course of order capture to fulfillment to post-fulfillment service.

You can integrate Order Management with your existing service, marketing, eCommerce, and community platform to create a consistent and comprehensive view of all the orders received from all touchpoints.

Why you should consider using Salesforce Order Management?

With the power and capabilities of Salesforce Order Management, you can:

• Obtain real-time visibility and control over inventory, orders, payments, and shipments.
• Achieve seamless omnichannel experiences across various platforms.
• Personalize and automate communication and service at every stage of the order process.
• Optimize order orchestration and fulfillment with considerations for cost, speed, and sustainability.
• Scale your order management system effortlessly with user-friendly tools and cutting-edge technology.

How Salesforce Order Management Helps Businesses Optimize B2C Order Management and Fulfillment?

By providing a centralized platform for order management and fulfillment, an efficient Order Management system helps businesses streamline various business segments. It also integrates data from operations, customer management, sales & marketing, and financial management.

Additionally, it automates critical processes to deliver real-time insights into customer behavior, inventory levels, order status, and customer feedback, enabling data-driven decision-making.

Here’s how Salesforce Order Management helps businesses optimize their B2C Order Management and Fulfillment:

1. Order Processing

In the era of digital commerce, Order Management Systems are the tools businesses can depend on for managing everything, from order confirmation and delivery to post-delivery across several channels at a fast pace. It helps you stay updated with order dispatching, cancellations, delivery location updates, and delivery schedule preferences through automated systems.

2. Inventory Management

With a wide variety of products, managing inventories without an Order Management System will only get complex. In these situations, an all-rounder Order Management system will break down all the backlashing and provide your team with ease to track orders at different warehouses.

Considering the shipping and sales forecasting data, you can also manage stock levels and schedule restocking. It also allows you to control your inventory and oversee your orders smoothly when connected with complete supply chain management.

3. Order Fulfillment and Shipping

Order fulfillment and shipping are vital for any business, but managing it at a scale can be a nightmare sometimes. An intelligent order management system like Salesforce’s that automates and tracks orders and shipments at scale gives you a bigger picture of your supply chain. What it gives you: quicker and quality decision-making, effective operations management, and better supply chain control.

For example, you can use order management data to dodge costly blunders in inventory and fulfillment, such as out-of-stock, overstock, or wrong or missed shipments, and ensure order precision and promptness. You can also foresee and tackle potential issues and delays before they blow up.

4. Customer Order Tracking

You can generate a unique order tracking ID for customers and your teams using a consolidated Order Management system, which enables customers to check everything related to their orders, like order fulfillment timelines, delivery dates, movement status, and more. It also gives your team members quick and effective customer support when order-related complaints and inquiries are received.

5. Customer Data Management

Salesforce Order Management system gathers and analyzes customer data from different data sources, sharing valuable insights into customers’ purchases and deliveries. For example, the marketing team can create personalized email campaigns based on individual purchase history, demographics, and preferences. This targeted approach is crucial in a world where 79% of customers expect customized offers.

6. Customer Communications & Feedback

Referring to a report of Salesforce State of the Connected Customers, an average of 13 channels is what a customer uses to interact with a brand. And across all these channels, they expect communication to be personalized and integrated, adding to their overall experience.

An order management system offers a comprehensive view of customer interactions across various channels, aiding effective responses and insightful decision-making. It also helps identify recurring issues and customer feedback trends, enabling more intelligent choices in product development and service strategies.

Where to use the capabilities of Salesforce Order Management?

When integrated with any of the following Salesforce Order Management, businesses can utilize its potential and create customer experiences better than ever, inclusive of enhanced customer loyalty and satisfaction with after-sale services:

1. Loyalty Management
2. Omnichannel Inventory
3. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Loyalty Management

Salesforce Order Management (OM) and Salesforce Loyalty Management (LM) work together to help businesses create a more seamless and rewarding customer experience. OM tracks orders and fulfillment, while LM tracks customer loyalty programs. By integrating these two systems, companies can:

You can learn here how to maximize customer retention with Salesforce Loyalty Management.

1. Automatically apply loyalty points to orders

OM automatically adds loyalty points to customer accounts when they place orders. This saves customers time and hassle and allows them to redeem their points for rewards as soon as they have enough.

2. Send targeted loyalty offers

LM tracks customer purchase history and preferences to send targeted loyalty offers. Consequently, customers become more engaged with the offers they receive, resulting in potential sales growth and enhanced customer loyalty.

3. Track customer lifetime value

OM and LM can track customer lifetime value (CLV) by combining data from both systems. This data enables businesses to make informed resource allocation and targeted marketing campaign decisions.

For instance, if a customer orders a product eligible for loyalty points, OM will automatically credit those points to the customer’s account. LM would then track the customer’s purchase history and preferences to send them targeted loyalty offers.

Salesforce Omnichannel Inventory

Salesforce Order Management (OM) and Omnichannel Inventory (OCI) collaborate to achieve seamless and precise order fulfillment. OM tracks orders, while OCI monitors inventory availability across channels.

The integration ensures orders are fulfilled from the most accurate inventory data, optimizing the process and enhancing customer service. For instance, when a customer orders a product in multiple locations, OM uses OCI data to determine the best fulfillment location based on factors like customer location, product availability, and shipping costs.

Overall, integrating OM and OCI can provide businesses with several benefits, including:

1. Seamless and accurate order fulfillment

By ensuring that orders are fulfilled from the most accurate inventory data, businesses can prevent oversells and undersells and ensure that customers receive the products they ordered.

2. Optimized order fulfillment

By using OCI data to determine the best fulfillment location for an order, businesses can minimize shipping costs and improve customer satisfaction.

3. Improved customer service

By providing real-time inventory availability data to customer service agents, businesses can help agents answer customer questions about order status and inventory availability.

4. Reduced shipping costs

OM and OCI can help businesses reduce shipping costs by optimizing order fulfillment.

Salesforce Service Cloud

When your customer completes an order, a complex journey begins that ends with the delivery of a package.

Salesforce Order Management enhances the fulfillment process with high-touch customer service, enabling your business to help customers get the information they need fast and easily. The OMS and Salesforce Service Cloud are separate products, but they work together seamlessly.

The data for the customers, service cases, chat transcripts, and OMS-related objects are all in the same database, so they can be quickly accessed by agents, giving them the data and productivity tools they need for a smooth customer service experience.

With Salesforce Service Cloud, you get many features, such as Salesforce Live Agent (live chat), that can be added to your sites. You can also use Salesforce Einstein chatbots to let customers ask a bot, “Where is my order?” and get an accurate status update.

With Salesforce Communities, you let customers log in to their portal and see their current and past order data and support cases.

Distribution Order Management

A Distributed Order Management System (DOMS) is vital for implementing efficient distributed order management in your business. This system streamlines your supply chain by enhancing various business processes, including inventory management, fulfillment, and more.

For example, a DOMS can automate tasks like order routing, splitting, and shipping to make your order deliveries faster.

A DOMS can also lower costs related to these operations, which you can then share with your customers (for instance, you could offer cheaper shipping options).

Moreover, the complexities of modern e-commerce require a flexible DOMS that can handle various aspects, such as:

• Payment processing Customer service (i.e., product returns and refunds)
• Order receiving and tracking
• Sales and inventory reporting
• Supplier monitoring

It should ensure your overall productivity and, most importantly, boost your customer experience.

1. Automated Order Routing

Salesforce Order Management uses automated flows to process every new order and start order fulfillment. You can also use auto-launched flows to route orders to fulfillment locations automatically. With distributed order management, you can automate finding the best sites to handle an order’s items and reserve inventory there.

An automated routing process follows these basic steps:

• Schedule routing
• Determine route
• Execute routing
• Create an invoice and ensure funds
• Fulfill reservation

Salesforce Order Management has flow core actions that you can use to make your routing rules and speed up your automated routing processes. These actions help you minimize split shipments and find the best fulfillment location for each order by using proximity-based routing.

These actions work together by first finding sets of locations that can fulfill an order and then finding which set is nearest to the order recipient. Together, these actions can improve efficiency and customer satisfaction by shipping orders in fewer shipments from closer locations.

2. Minimizing Split Shipments

The Find Routes with Fewest Splits action reduces delays, confusion, and shipping costs caused by split shipments. Customers receive orders more quickly by prioritizing fulfillment from locations with the least splits, boosting satisfaction and loyalty.

For instance, if a product is available in two locations, the action fulfills from the location with more inventory first. It can also limit splits based on user-defined preferences, ensuring efficient order fulfillment. With this feature, businesses optimize their shipping processes, enhancing customer experience and overall efficiency.

Let’s understand this with an example.

Original Routing:

The original routing for the order includes three locations:

• Location A has 10 units of product A in stock.
• Location B has 5 units of product A in stock.
• Location C has 15 units of product A in store.
• The order requires 20 units of product A.

The original routing splits the order into two shipments:

• 10 units from Location A to the customer.
• 10 units from Location C to the customer.

New routing:

• The new routing for the order uses the Find Routes with Fewest Splits action to find a routing that minimizes the number of splits.
• The new routing uses Location A and Location B to fulfill the order.
• The new routing does not split the order, and the customer receives all 20 units of product A in a single shipment.

The new routing is now reduced with the number of splits arranged in the final routes. It’s going to benefit customers as they will be receiving their entire order in one shipment, resulting in an improvement in customer satisfaction and savings in shipping overheads.

3. Order Routing with Omnichannel Inventory

When it comes to order routing, real-time inventory availability information is key. That’s where the Salesforce Omnichannel Inventory comes in.

Omnichannel Inventory provides several core flow actions that you can use to implement inventory functionality inflows. This means that you can use the flow core actions from the Salesforce Omnichannel Inventory to create and manage reservations as part of your automated fulfillment processes.

By adding real-time inventory availability information to your automated fulfillment processes, you can improve the reliability and efficiency of your fulfillment workflow.

4. Track Order Routing Attempts

When orders aren’t fully routed, or reservations are cancelled, Salesforce Order Management lets you implement your rerouting logic. To keep track of routing information, you can use the Order Summary Routing Schedule and Routing Attempts fields.

a. Order Summary Routing Schedule

The Order Summary Routing Schedule object tracks a single attempt to route an order. It includes the scheduled date and time of the attempt, the status of the attempt, and the reason the attempt failed.

You can create Order Summary Routing Schedule records to schedule future routing attempts or to record past attempts. However, once you set the status of an Order Summary Routing Schedule to Completed or Abandoned, you cannot change the scheduled date and time.

b. Routing Attempts Field

The Routing Attempts field is a customizable field that allows you to record the number of times an order summary has been routed to a fulfillment location.

To Conclude

Efficient order management is important for business success in the dynamic commerce landscape. Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a comprehensive and adaptable solution that caters to businesses of all sizes, empowering them to achieve growth objectives.

With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, real-time visibility into orders, inventory, and customer data equips businesses to make informed decisions and enhance the customer experience.

At Cyntexa, we specialize in Salesforce Commerce Cloud, creating tailored setups for seamless order management. We cover essential tasks to optimize your operations, from generating historical inventory reports to order summaries and payment details.

Look no further than Salesforce Commerce Cloud for a powerful and flexible order management solution that drives business growth.

Embrace order efficiency like never before with Salesforce Order Management.