The role of an OMS in endless aisle

This post is sponsored by CLEARgo.

An order management system (OMS) is a single, centralised system that supports orders, inventory, fulfilment, and returns, from multiple sales channels, including bricks-and-mortar stores, websites, kiosks, and more.

It organises and automates key parts of the processes for retailers and customers. It has become increasingly important to drive the customer experience and optimise inventory utilisation. Do you know that OMS plays an indispensable role in a successful endless aisle strategy?

What is endless aisle?

Endless aisle is a strategy retailers use to help in-store customers order products through an online store during their visit. It is a contrast of the buy online, pick up in-store service, which is also known as click and collect. Customers can order out-of-stock items that aren’t available at the physical store they visited and ship them home directly a few days later.

Retailers often offer an endless aisle service in various ways. Retail outlets have invested in kiosk systems at the counter where customers can browse the product catalogue, make purchases, and have them shipped to their homes. Alternatively, they can offer virtual carts for customers as they shop and complete the orders later on.

This is suitable for retailers that are selling heavy and huge products, including home appliances and furniture. The customer may want to have a look at the actual item, but it is not convenient for them to carry it home.

Benefits of endless aisle

A bricks-and-mortar store has limited space within the store and a finite amount of shelf space. Stores can only stock a limited number of products, therefore, offering an endless aisle service is like carrying all your products available online to your physical store.

Retail outlets can offer products beyond their space limit. It offers fresh buying intent when a customer scrolls through the screen and gets interested in products that weren’t what they were looking for initially.

Endless aisle can capitalise on the customer buying intent without losing sales because of low stock. They enter the store with buying intent and out-of-stock products will definitely disappoint them. Leaving empty-handed is really an awful experience that will affect customer loyalty towards your shop. Shoppers can now easily visit a different store if the item they’re looking for is out of stock. It ensures that if they can’t find the product, the shop will deliver it to their doorstep within an agreed time frame.

Inventory management is becoming a real struggle for retail outlets as customers expect as much product selection as possible. However, keeping a large number of product variants and stock will eventually turn into a risk factor for individual shop outlets to reconsider. With endless aisle service available, they can have a lower inventory stock without affecting the customer expectation.

How an OMS can tackle the challenges in implementing endless aisle

Overcoming inventory management challenges is critical in executing an endless aisle service. Communication between the supply chain and retail stores can be better managed with an order management system that updates in real-time, and states the real-time data about the current stock. This can prevent you from selling a product and then finding out it is actually out of stock later. This will lead to a cancelled order.

An OMS can centralise the inventory and orders from multiple touch-points and track the requests from the different stock lists. With more than one retail store, staff can check another store’s product stock in real-time accurately. By doing this, you can make a hassle-free delivery to the customer with confidence.

Besides the delivery option, staff can actually advise customers to get the product at the nearest outlet with stock. This can further assist those who have urgent needs. And the best way to enhance customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases is to give them a good buying experience.

Aside from facilitating your endless aisle service, a robust OMS, such as the CLEARomni OMS, has diverse features. It is able to smoothen order fulfilment operations across multiple channels through pre-built integration with major brand.com eCommerce platforms and third party marketplaces. The employees can have one single overview for all orders which can further reduce errors and effort needed. On top of that, it can customise order routing and fulfilment workflows that suit your company’s operational needs to send information to suppliers/warehouses/stores promptly.

The automation of determining the best party to handle the fulfilment will further reduce the manual effort needed. In a B2B2C setting, business is also able to delegate order management to suppliers. Our experienced team can integrate the system with the existing POS and ERP, different 3PLs, warehouses, and couriers.

Read more on OMS: https://clearomni.com/clearomni-oms-distributed-order-management-system?hsLang=en