Do you have an order management opportunity?

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted a webinar on B2B order management with three industry veterans — Sam Aldinger (formerly Fastenal, now with B2B Squared), Sathyan Pal (supply chain and fulfillment practice lead at Publicis Sapient), and Rutvee Shah  (Director of Product at Kibo Commerce). The conversation reinforced something I’ve believed for a while: the order management problem in B2B isn’t hiding because it’s small. It’s hiding because companies have normalized it.

Sam shared a great observation from his time at a large industrial distributors: Nobody ever walked in and said “your order management system is broken.” They showed up with symptoms: Where’s my order? Why is my delivery date wrong? Why can’t I see my options?

The real awakening? Documenting the full ordering process, end-to-end. This revealed all the existing labor and capability that was being wasted on work-arounds. Sathyan described the same pattern across his clients: companies that can’t get a clean picture of inventory, still doing allocation in Excel sheets. And Rutvee nailed the mindset issue: most companies think, “we already have order management — it’s in our ERP.” And that statement explains a lot about the struggles that can easily be accepted.

I’ve come to realize that many distributors and manufacturers, particularly those with growing & vibrant online businesses, have an order management opportunity. In fact, we’ve added OMS to our Platform Genius roadmap, to help companies in the RFP process. 

Because this problem goes deeper than many B2B companies realize—certainly more than my prior realization.

Last year, we worked with a billion-dollar distributor on an eCommerce RFP. They had nine warehouses across the country. Thousands of SKUs. Complex customers. Sophisticated operation.

But one challenge I noticed from inception…

Inventory was entirely predicated on the shipping location the customer chose upon logging in. The system would only show them inventory from the two closest distribution centers.

Need to re-stock something critical? Too bad—if your “local” warehouses don’t have it, you’ll never know that it’s sitting in inventory 500 miles away.

A ‘problem’? No, but…

The system was making choices for customers that customers would really prefer to make for themselves.

A colleague once shared something that’s stayed with me 5 years later:

“It’s impossible to talk about customer experience without talking about fulfillment.”

Tru dat.

Here’s the type of thing I see distributors and manufacturers struggling with all the time.

A customer needs 200 units by Friday. They’re willing to pay for expedited shipping. Your warehouse in Ohio has 150 units. Your warehouse in Texas has 100.

What happens next?

In most cases, someone manually figures it out. They check inventory. They call the warehouse. They override the system. They piece together a solution that works—this time.

But here’s what the customer never gets to do: choose.

They don’t get to say “split the order, I need what you have now.” They don’t get to say “I’ll pay extra to get it all from one location by Wednesday.” They don’t get to make the trade-offs that matter to their business.

Instead, we make those choices for them. Not because we want to—but because our systems can’t handle anything else.

In the prior example, the distributor was essentially hiding inventory (at least online) from customers because the order complexity couldn’t account for it. This actually became a central issue in their eCom re-platforming.

In 15 years working with distributors and manufacturers, the symptoms are easy to identify:

• Customer service reps who spend hours routing orders manually
• Rules that exist in people’s heads instead of in the system
• Workarounds that everyone knows about but nobody has time to fix
• Customers who’ve learned not to ask for what they actually need

How many orders is your team manually touching? Not because the orders are complex—but because the system can’t handle the complex customer requirements.

That’s not order management. That’s order entry with extra steps.

When COVID hit, everything changed overnight. Customers needed different delivery options. Supply chains got disrupted. Lead times became unpredictable. The companies that survived weren’t just the ones with inventory—they were the ones who could orchestrate that inventory to meet customer needs.

But most B2B companies are still running on systems built for a different era. Systems that assume:

• One (or a couple) distribution points
• Standard shipping options for everyone
• Simple approval workflows
• Customers who accept your fulfillment options

But, increasingly, that’s not the B2B world we live in anymore.

Here’s the fundamental issue: Your ERP was built to record transactions, not to manage an inherent customer experience issue: Order orchestration.

What if you could set up a rule that says, “if the customer is in this segment and selects expedited shipping and the order value is over X, route to the closest warehouse with available inventory and charge the premium rate”?

Without that capability, someone has to manually override the default fulfillment logic. Every. Single. Time.

Now multiply that across:

• Drop-ship arrangements with specific vendors
• Customer-specific carrier preferences
• Approval workflows for large orders
• Split shipments to multiple locations
• Backorder handling based on customer priority
• Emergency orders that need same-day processing

You end up with a massive hidden cost: the gap between what your customers need and what your system can deliver.

But in reality—it’s not just about efficiency.

It’s about the revenue you’re leaving on the table.

How many customers would buy more if they could specify delivery requirements? How many would pay for premium fulfillment options if you could offer them? How many orders are you losing because “the system can’t do that”?

One manufacturer I spoke with realized they were turning away small orders from new customers because their system couldn’t handle the complexity of serving customers outside their core distribution network. They were literally saying no to revenue because fulfillment was too manual.

This is where a true Order Management System (OMS) comes into play.

An OMS sits between your commerce platform and your ERP, orchestrating the complexity that neither system was built to handle. Think of it as the intelligent layer that translates customer requirements into fulfillment decisions.

It turns manual processes into automated rules. Remember that scenario where a premium customer selects expedited shipping on a high-value order? An OMS lets you configure that logic once: “Customer segment A + expedited shipping + order value >$5,000 = route to closest warehouse with full inventory + apply expedited carrier + calculate premium shipping rate.” Your team sets the rule. The system executes it. Every time.

Real-time inventory orchestration across your network. An OMS aggregates inventory visibility across all your warehouses, drop-ship vendors, and third-party logistics partners. The previously-mentioned distributor? With an OMS, customers can see inventory across all nine warehouses and choose: “I’ll take what’s available locally today” or “Show me everything you have — I need this by Thursday regardless of where it ships from.”

Intelligent order routing based on your business logic. Not every order should route the same way. An OMS lets you define routing rules based on customer priority tiers, product margins, warehouse capacity, carrier performance, and delivery commitments. The system makes these decisions — decisions that would take your team hours to optimize manually.

Revenue increases. You can say “yes” to orders you previously couldn’t handle. One distributor captured an additional 8% revenue in the first year just by fulfilling orders they were previously turning away or routing inefficiently.

Operational costs decrease. Your team handles exceptions instead of every order. Manual touches drop from double-digit percentages to under 5%.

Customer experience improves. Customers get choices, real-time availability, and delivery options that match their needs. When you consistently deliver on requirements, loyalty follows.

And here’s the key: none of this requires ripping out the ERP. Modern order orchestration sits between your commerce front-end and your ERP, handling the complexity that ERPs were never designed to manage.

There’s one simple question for you and your team:

What percentage of orders require manual intervention?

If the answer is more than 10%, you likely have an order management opportunity. Not because your team isn’t capable — they’re probably incredibly skilled at working around system limitations. But every manual touch is a signal that customers are asking for things your system can’t deliver.

My goal isn’t to sell you on an OMS. It’s to surface the issues it solves so you can make the determination. Many B2B companies simply aren’t aware that rule-based systems exist that can replace manual operations — opening an entirely new world of customer experience.

The companies that figure this out aren’t just improving efficiency. They’re capturing revenue their competitors are leaving on the table. They’re turning fulfillment from a constraint into a competitive advantage.

Feel free to reach out if we can help with any questions. You can view the webinar recording here.