Flexible Platform
Fluent OMS lets you quickly adapt business processes and decisions to manage fulfillment locations and networks of locations. This means you can change which networks can fulfill specific order types (delivery or pickup), or quickly take a network offline - based on the preferred business outcomes. You can also configure what stock you make Available to Promise (ATP) and create custom fulfillment rules based on customer loyalty status, product attributes, the size of an order… the list is endless.
If you're a retailer, this lets you differentiate your Click & Collect (or Buy Online Pickup In-Store), Ship from Store, Omnichannel Returns and Customer Service experiences, so you stand out from the competition. And, because the platform is so flexible, you can adapt quickly as customer preferences evolve.
Inventory and Order Management
Fluent Order Management lets you see all your stock in all locations for a single view of inventory. This means you can show customers what’s available before the ‘buy button’ so they’re more likely to complete the sale. The Fluent platform also lets you orchestrate and manage orders across locations, channels, and partners, so you can optimize fulfillment for fast delivery, customer experience, and profitability.
API-first Architecture
Built for the cloud, Fluent Order Management lets you scale as needed, anywhere around the globe, and be confident in your ability to handle growth. Further, the platform’s flexible API-first architecture means it’s ideal for headless deployment.
Solutions
Click & Collect
Ship from Store
Single View of Inventory
Return Anywhere
Fulfil from Anywhere
Customer Service
Industries
Consumer Products
Retail
Wholesale Distribution
TYPICAL USE CASES
Below is a list of typical use cases when integrating commercetools with Fluent Order Management.
Product Availability
Product Details Page (PDP) - Show customers what’s Available to Promise (ATP) on the Product Details Page (PDP). This includes stock from distribution centers, stores, 3PLs, drop shippers, etc. and the location and available pickup time for Click and Collect orders.
Checkout - Show the expected delivery date or collection location and time for multiple products in the shopping cart. This includes orders shipped from a Distribution Center, or via Ship to Store, or Store Fulfillment, and split shipments.
Rules driven Available to Promise (ATP) - Configure ATP based on criteria such as customer loyalty level, value of the basket, whether you want to split an order, etc.
While inventory can be passed to commercetools, real-time inventory calls are typically direct from the storefront to reduce latency.
Order Fulfillment
Smart Order Routing - Automatically route orders based on your specific business rules. This could be to prioritize delivery time or cost or reduce split shipments. You can also create biases for fulfilling from the store with the lowest throughput, lowest number of orders being processed, or store type.
Real-time Order Routing - Send orders to fulfillment locations in real-time, whether to a Distribution Center, Drop Ship Vendor (DSV), or store.
Order History
Up to date order status - Display order history with real-time status updates from the Fluent Order Management platform.
Customer Self Service
Cancellations/Exchanges/Refunds - Let customers initiate full or partial cancelations/exchanges/returns/refunds and validate eligibility based on order status, product type, or product attributes.
INTEGRATION APPROACH
Fluent’s cloud-native order management system can integrate via an integration abstraction layer or directly with commercetools (point-to-point) for specific use cases. Either of the two integration approaches will provide highly available, highly scalable APIs, seamlessly exposed to multiple consumer touchpoints. This modern approach enables proper mapping, validation, connectivity and monitoring capabilities for services provided from Fluent OMS to other microservices to fulfil many business scenarios. The extensions to commercetools APIs in order to support the integration can be serverless lambda functions or microservices for each use case.
GraphQL Support
Fluent Order Management and commercetools support GraphQL natively, allowing the customer to take advantage of modern GraphQL integration and puts you in control of the data you receive. Each client retrieves exactly the data it needs, more efficiently, compliments event-based API’s and is used extensively with the various customer touch points. Native GraphQL support solves various challenges like fetching necessary data using one request thereby reducing wait time, no over and under fetching of data, ability to tailor requests based on the customer touchpoint, automatic validation and type checking, etc.
Event Driven Architecture
All of the entities (such as order, fulfillment, inventory, availability, and returns) in the Fluent Order Management platform are event driven, which means that middleware can subscribe to updates from Fluent Order Management and pass them to commercetools. This allows for effective asynchronous communication.
Webhook Support
A webhook is a way for Orchestrated Workflow Logic to call back to an external application, such as a notification provider, ecommerce client middleware, or ERP system. Fluent Order Management can post an event to a configured endpoint. This provides an alternative integration option across all business processes.
Integration Flexibility
Whether you’re a retailer, brand or distributor, your Order Management System sits at the heart of your businesses’ online and offline processes. This can include eCommerce, ERP, WMS, POS, legacy systems, carrier solutions, notification systems, payment solutions, third party vendors and suppliers, and each can have its own unique requirements. So flexibility is key.
commercetools and Fluent Order Management complement each other well. Their cloud-native, API-first architecture provides you with the flexible options needed to support large enterprises with complex business rules and diverse integration requirements. What’s more, their ability to scale dynamically means they’re ready to support your future growth.
