Order Management Systems: Streamlining Business Intelligence

Every business irrespective of its size is profit oriented. The growth and success of any business is determined by its expansion, profit margins and revenue collected. During the initial stages of business, responding to customer needs and demands is easy as is the orders are also minimal.   However, as business expands the enterprises need to expert methods to ensure the correct procurement of products and services, track orders, sales and inventory so as to maintain better customer relationships.

The technologically enabled business world today makes use of a number of automated procurement and order management systems to maintain and manage the smooth functioning of the supply chain network. With the development of e-commerce, organizations have greater scope for business expansion and thus tend to make use of the cloud based business procurement process. Such automated purchasing process strengthens the value network of the organization by integrating the buyers and suppliers with the help of IT systems.

The cloud-based procurement systems goes way ahead of the traditional purchase order software and eases out post award management functions by automating the end-to-end workflow from order, delivery to invoicing.  Further, the use of order management systems enables the enterprises to track the progress of the product or service. Inefficiencies in the ERP system or order management process will lead to loss of revenue, hamper customer relationship and inability to integrate with eprocurement process.

The leading market player shave designed and developed order management systems, which would provide visibility and control over the supply chain activities. These systems can integrate well into the ERP and warehouse managing systems of the value networks. The cloud process based order management system has the ability to incorporate the entire logistics from order to delivery and supports a web based order placement from the customer’s ERP systems.

These cloud based order management system provide high degree of functionality through a connectivity platform that paves way for automatic allocation of transport, validation of inventory, routing details and destination, stock updates and sales orders. The system is also designed to provide real time data to supply chain organisation to ensure improved management of delivery processes. From the organizations point, these cloud process based order management software brings about a significant reduction in cost, helps to track and trace consignments. With its real-time reporting mechanism and 24/7 access, it records higher asset utilization, quicker implementation and streamlined business intelligence for a higher Return of Investment.  


Also read on - Purchase order software, Supply chain management solutions

Collaborate in Your Global value Network

The value network or the value chain as it is commonly called is the full range of activities that the organizations do to get a product from its conception to its end use and beyond. This includes actions right from design, production, marketing, distribution and support to reaching it to the consumer.  The value network has been evolved beyond individual firms. It can apply to whole supply chain and distribution networks. The delivery of products and services to the end customer mobilizes different economic factors, each having its own value network.

In today’s highly competitive, complex and volatile business environment, it is extremely difficult to achieve optimum control and efficiency in a value network made up of your partners and their relevant systems. A value network is multi enterprise and spans over the industries of the numerous e-commerce partners that participate in an end-to-end collaboration.

Effective collaboration is important across value network for hyper connected organizations as processing of the majority of the company’s assets and added value is done by business partners. IT is changing the way businesses are collaborating with business partners.

Traditional methods and tools are not sufficient to manage the widely-distributed, business-critical resources in the value network. There are immense challenges that businesses have to face:

1. Poor transparency
2. Difficulty in synchronization of activities that leads to rising costs.  
3. Lack of Synchronization in the type of ERP system that should be used across partners  
4. Relying on IT-supported manual administration
5. Lack of responsibility of products far beyond the point of sale

Cloud computing today enables companies to take control of, and manage, their value networks. Today’s businesses use Cloud Processes that integrate and automate the business processes network across partners and the systems they use. This gives end-to-end visibility of the entire value network based on real-time information and access to all key master information, whether it resides inside or outside your own network.  

Advantage of Cloud Processes for the Value Network

1. Essential business information readily available to all authorized constituents across the Value Network.
2. Provide the end-to-end visibility of real-time business information at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels.
3. Provides business process agility necessary to cope with today’s volatile, complex, and super interconnected globalized markets.
4. Cloud Processes can be custom-built to specific customer requirements.
5. Take responsibility for many of their products far beyond the point of sale. In some cases, they are responsible for the recycling and return of worn out goods.

Maximize your Value Network, strengthen the free movement of people, goods, capital, and services in the global marketplace; independent of language, geography, or business sector; with the use of Cloud Processes.

Also read on:  After sales service, order fulfillment process

Value Network - A Business Analysis Process

To explain as elementarily as possible, a value network is known as a business analysis or a business viewpoint that delineates the technical as well as the social resources existing between and within businesses. Often you will hear about “nodes” in such a network, which stands for the people. Interactions representing the intangible and tangible deliverables connect the nodes. They sometimes come in the form of knowledge or other financial aspects.

A word that best describes a value network is interdependence. These business process network are responsible for the total worth of services and products. Organizations possess both external as well as inter value networks. Let us understand what they are.

External value networks
The external facing network comprise of the elements that are listed below-

• Recipients or customers
• Stakeholders
• Open innovation networks
• Intermediaries
• Suppliers

Internal value networks
There are certain key areas on which the internal value networks concentrate. They include the prime activities and other associations and methods that cross over the internal boundaries and are listed as follows:-

• Order fulfillment
• Lead processing
• Innovation
• Customer support

Here the value is generated via the relationship and exchange of various roles and responsibilities. These value networks are said to operate on civil societies, public agencies, institutions, enterprises and different forms of organization. They focus on wealth, innovation, social welfare and an overall environmental wellness.

Yet there have been reasons as to why the traditional methods of operation have made the value network have loopholes. Information technology is altering swiftly the collaboration regulations amongst business partners. It is the capacity to be able to maximize cloud-oriented technology to organize major factors like business methods, relevant inputs, business association and networking, quality services that will ascertain the height of achievement in today world of cloud computing.

In addition to that, organizations these days are most often forced to take charge for numerous products and services, even beyond the selling point. There are instances, wherein they are accountable for the return and the recycling of damaged goods. This is done keeping in mind several environmental factors. Products and services today are known for their individuality, which means each of them needs to be truly unique and different from each other. Precision is what the users demand and seek for in a market that is getting increasingly complex. Delivery too needs to make at a less price. All these factors have resulted in bottlenecks in the value networks via the traditional ways of operation.

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