Order management

What is Order management?

Order management is the process of receiving, processing and fulfilling customer orders, from the moment a shopper checks out until the parcel arrives and any return is settled. In ecommerce it covers every sales channel at once: your webshop, marketplaces and sometimes physical stores. The ecommerce order management cycle usually runs in this order: capture the order, confirm payment, check stock and allocate it to a warehouse, pick and pack, ship and share tracking, then handle returns, exchanges and refunds. Many stores run this in an order management system (OMS) or in their ERP. Order management is not the same as supply order management, which handles purchase orders you send to your own suppliers. Clean SKUs and stock data across channels make every step easier, which is why a multi-channel catalog matters for orders too.

Why Order management matters for e-commerce

Shoppers judge a store on what happens after checkout as much as on the product page. Late shipments, wrong items and slow refunds lead to complaints, bad reviews and lost repeat customers. On marketplaces they can also hurt your seller standing, because platforms track late shipments and cancellations. Good order management keeps stock, orders and customer updates in step across every channel, so you do not sell an item twice or promise a delivery date you cannot keep. It also depends on product data: the SKU, weight, dimensions and variant on the order must match what the warehouse and the carrier expect.

Examples of Order management

• 1Step: Order capture, Example: A shopper buys running shoes in size 42 on your Shopify store and the order lands in your OMS
• 2Step: Allocation, Example: The OMS picks the warehouse that has size 42 in stock and is closest to the customer
• 3Step: Shipping, Example: The warehouse packs the order, books a carrier and the shopper gets a tracking link by email
• 4Step: Returns, Example: The shopper returns the shoes for size 43, the OMS creates an exchange order and restocks size 42

Tips for Order management

• Map your full order flow on one page, from checkout to refund, and note which system owns each step.
• Use one SKU per sellable variant in every channel, so orders match stock without manual lookups.
• Send order confirmation, shipping and delivery emails automatically.
• Set clear return rules and process returns within a fixed number of days.
• Review late and cancelled orders every week and fix the cause, not only the order.

Trends around Order management

• Distributed order management: one system routes each order to the warehouse, store or dropshipper that can ship it best.
• Buy online, pick up in store: stores act as small warehouses and the OMS must know their stock.
• Automated returns portals that let shoppers start a return and pick a refund or exchange themselves.
• Marketplace order consolidation: orders from several marketplaces are handled in one queue.
• Delivery promises on the product page, calculated from real stock and carrier data.

Tools for Order management

• Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento 2: webshop platforms with built-in order screens for smaller order volumes.
• Picqer: warehouse and order management software popular with Dutch and Belgian webshops.
• ChannelEngine: connects webshops to marketplaces and brings marketplace orders into one flow.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP: ERP suites with order management modules for larger companies.
• WISEPIM: a PIM that manages the product data behind every order and imports orders from several webshop platforms for analytics.

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