The 7 Little-Known Secrets to an OMS That Boosts Your Sales

By Charlotte Journo-Baur, Founder of WISHIBAM

What exactly is an order management system (OMS)? It’s the invisible backbone of effective unified commerce. An OMS centralizes, orchestrates, and optimizes every step of an order’s lifecycle—from creation to delivery, including inventory management, returns, and customer care. Without it, you’re flying blind. With it, you make sharp, real-time decisions across all your channels.

In 2024, as health and social factors continue to shake up supply chains, OMS competition intensifies, and customer expectations rise, mastering your OMS isn’t optional. It’s survival.

This article reveals the seven least-known secrets to transform your OMS into a true growth engine: actionable strategies, up-to-date data, and practical examples—clear steps you can implement right away.

Understanding OMS and Its Role in Retail

What Is an OMS and How Does It Work

Order management is far more complex than it appears. Picture this: a customer orders online, wants to pick up in-store, changes their mind, requests a partial exchange, then a refund via a different channel. Multiplied by thousands of daily transactions. It’s no wonder that Excel sheets no longer suffice.

An OMS is specialized software that centralizes all orders from all sales channels (e-commerce, marketplaces, stores, phone…). It processes orders via management rules, routes them to the right fulfillment point, and tracks each order to delivery.

• Reception and consolidation of omnichannel orders
• Real-time inventory verification
• Intelligent routing to the optimal dispatch point
• Payment and fraud management
• Logistics tracking and customer communication
• Returns and exchanges handling

What sets a quality OMS apart is its ability to make automatic, intelligent decisions. If an item is out of stock in the central warehouse but available in stores, the OMS can identify the nearest store to the customer, trigger shipment, and inform the customer—automatically, in real time.

Retailers with a high-performing OMS reduce fulfillment costs by 15–25% and significantly improve customer satisfaction. (Forrester Research)

At WISHIBAM, our OMS is designed for such intelligent orchestration—tapping into local inventory as a central fulfillment lever. Dormant in-store stock is a powerful, often neglected opportunity.

The Importance of an OMS in Inventory Management

Inventory management is a source of costly misunderstandings. Many believe their ERP or WMS suffices, but:

• ERP manages inventory accounting
• WMS manages warehouse movements
• OMS manages the commercial promise made to each customer—and ensures it’s kept

This distinction is crucial. Many retailers suffer visible stockouts with overfilled warehouses, or overstock on fast-selling items online. A high-performing OMS enables you to:

• Get a unified, real-time inventory view—warehouse, in transit, or in-store
• Set allocation rule priorities by channel and margin
• Anticipate outages with automatic alerts
• Reduce cancellations due to availability errors

Stockouts and overstocks cost global retailers $1.8 trillion annually. (IHL Group)

OMS-driven inventory management isn’t just about counting units. It’s about transforming stock into a strategic asset, generating revenue across all channels. This is WISHIBAM’s approach: synchronizing in-store stock with digital channels for maximum product availability.

Another key point: crisis readiness. Recent disruptions—from logistics to health—have shown that only a consolidated, reactive inventory view protects retailers. A well-configured OMS brings agility and resilience.

Retail OMS Strategies to Boost Sales

OMS isn’t just a technical tool—it’s a competitive lever. Effective strategies include:

• Using the OMS to sell in-store inventory online and expose 100% availability across channels
• Personalizing fulfillment journeys: offer relevant delivery options (click & collect, ship-from-store, express) based on location and real stock
• Ship-from-store to reduce delivery times and cost
• Dynamic inventory allocation based on channel profitability
• Driving real-time promotions triggered by inventory data
• Integrating OMS data into demand forecasting tools
• Automating returns to reduce cost and improve CX

Another underutilized strategy is commercial management: OMS data—order volumes, stockout rates, processing times, return rates—are goldmines for buying and merchandising decisions.

The Secrets to Optimizing Your OMS

Effective OMS Integration Into Your Existing System

Most OMS projects stumble not in selection or launch, but during integration. ERP, WMS, CRM, PIM, e-commerce platform, in-store checkout—the OMS must communicate with all, in real time, frictionlessly.

• Map data flows before starting. What information should circulate, how often, and in which direction?
• Prefer architectures based on open REST APIs over custom developments, to avoid locking in long-term costs and complexity.
• Secure these integration points first:
  • Real-time (or near real-time) inventory sync with ERP
  • E-commerce platform connection for order and availability updates
  • WMS interface to initiate order prep
  • Carrier integration for logistics tracking
  • CRM connection for customer history and post-purchase comms
• Don’t overlook the human factor: OMS adoption transforms daily work. Training and change management are essential.

WISHIBAM’s methodology integrates operational teams from the design phase, guaranteeing smooth and lasting adoption.

Using Data to Improve Inventory Management

Every OMS event is a valuable data point: order, cancellation, return, fulfillment time. Yet, many retailers underutilize this wealth of information.

• Track these KPIs in your OMS:
  • Product availability by channel
  • Average order processing time by fulfillment point
  • Cancelation rates and causes
  • Return rates by product and channel
  • Logistics performance by carrier/geography
  • Fulfillment cost per order, per channel

Cross this data with additional sources (sales, weather, in-store foot traffic, web analytics) to drive proactive, data-informed decisions.

Retailers who adopt a data-centric OMS reduce inventory costs by 20–30% and increase sales by 5–10%. (McKinsey)

WISHIBAM’s built-in analytics dashboard offers granular KPI tracking down to the store and SKU level.

How to Choose the Best OMS System for Your Business

No “one-size-fits-all” OMS exists—only the right one for your unique business. Main criteria include:

• Scalability: Can the platform grow with you?
• Functional scope: Does it cover the full order lifecycle with rich inventory and routing features?
• Integrations: Native connectors with market systems?
• Real-time capabilities: Frequency of data syncs?
• Usability: Is it easy for teams to adopt?
• Support: What service levels (SLAs) are offered?
• Total cost: License, integration, and maintenance costs (over 3 years)
• Vendor expertise: Does the provider understand retail reality?

This is WISHIBAM’s distinguishing factor: deep-rooted retail knowledge—our OMS is built for your field challenges, not just for technology’s sake.

Current OMS Impact and Trends

OMS Competition and 2024 Health Impact

OMS competition is fierce and accelerating, especially with cloud-native entrants and platforms integrating more OMS features.

The OMS market was valued at $1.6B in 2023 and is set to grow at 11.4% yearly until 2030. (Grand View Research)

• Shifting customer demand for faster, more transparent delivery
• Complexifying supply chains post-pandemic
• Increasing regulations around logistics and returns
• Environmental concerns pressuring fulfillment carbon footprints
• Labor market tensions driving automation

Retailers with an agile OMS win a significant lead. Those still on fragmented, manual systems face fast-mounting deficits.

2024 Health and Social News in France

The French environment in 2024 presents new OMS challenges:

• Transport and logistics sector strikes caused regional delivery disruptions. Retailers with modern OMS could quickly reroute orders, communicate proactively, and minimize impacts; others suffered losses and chaos.
• Mainland France saw major flu waves affecting warehouse and store staff. Retailers with automated OMS weathered absenteeism without major business impact.
• Rising consumer price-sensitivity increases demand for service and promotions, pressuring OMS to enable fast, accurate, and cost-effective fulfillment and returns.
• New European e-commerce rules require stricter inventory and delivery time transparency—demands only real-time OMS can meet.

The message: OMS is now a matter of regulatory compliance and commercial health—as much as ops efficiency.

Where to Find 2024 Health Information and Its Influence on Retail

Accurate and timely health intelligence is a genuine competitive advantage:

• Santé Publique France: Weekly epidemiological bulletins help forecast demand surges (pharmacy, food, etc.)
• Ministry of Labor: Business operating guidelines during health alerts—key for capacity planning
• INSEE: Household consumption data for adjusting OMS demand curves and thresholds
• Trade federations: Timely updates and sector data flows

Top retailers integrate external feeds into their OMS for demand sensing: weak signals like weather, events, and online search trends are factored into short-term forecasts. This is critical for categories sensitive to health and seasonality.

FAQ: Order Management Systems & Retail in 2024