Order Management and Fulfillment Using Microservices

Microservices have grown in popularity. Many order management system (OMS) providers use it as a strong selling point and try to sell their OMS solutions. However, let us first see the advantages of microservices architecture are for order management and fulfillment. Should organizations and businesses pay more attention to this architecture model?

Microservices constitute applications that have separate, small, independently-working and independently-deployable services. The provider, therefore, separates code bases, while keeping the loosely coupled together (each service with its own database).

This architecture model provides the ability to select those “services” you need to quickly deploy and also minimizes the risk of breaking the code when updating parts of the service. This design aims to increase agility, precise scalability, and deployment flexibility by applying service-oriented architecture and design principles that are domain-driven to distributed applications.

Download our eBook for FREE “How to choose the best microservices vendor and trim the costs". 

Microservices enable technology purchasers to select software capabilities to reduce TCO, without sacrificing the quality and can pick up the best-in-breed solution for a service.

Can Monolithic Software be used for OMS

When retailers have resorted to using monolithic systems, they have had good visibility of the availability, store inventory, and general movement of their goods across the supply chain. This is more obvious when an order is placed via e-commerce or the omnichannel method. The very nature of the monolithic infrastructure design makes it rigid and systems had to be redesigned even when the smallest changes were brought in. Time, money, and resources were at a premium during periods of change and that is when organizations wanted to rethink monolithic systems and replace them with microservices.

OMS and Microservices Architecture

To the question “should an OMS have microservices architecture”, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’ as microservices is best known to solve complex requirements of any application. OMS is known for its complexity that retailers, manufacturing organizations, brands, and distributors know only too well. 

Most enterprise retailers have to deal with 8-14 applications associated with commerce operations. Commerce is by itself complex and, therefore, it is helpful if the OMS is not so. Leveraging any OMS with microservices architecture can give your brand the agility you require to meet the evolving demands of your customers, both now and in the future. 

Read our blog “How to Handle Failed Transactions in Microservices”.

New supply chain complexities and changing market systems require order management that is based on faster, more accurate, and more responsive digital data exchange. The following four actions that would make this happen are:

•  Capturing an order and entering it into the computer just once, without any manual steps for re-entering data. This should happen close to the source.
• Automating order processing helps to identify problems and provide real-time information. Your teams can instead manage other core or associated functions, which makes for better productivity (inventory shortages, delayed delivery, etc.).
• To tackle problems like inventory shortage, your OMS should be able to alert the appropriate CSR for the resolution of the problem, instead of being prompted by the customer.
• An integrated OMS package that manages orders accurately and provides real-time status on products and orders is recommended. Other supporting systems that are designed to manage customer-facing content (such as data and pricing) have to be made to flow along with the applications.

Fortunately, microservices system architecture design can help to carry out the OMS processes successfully. 

Read our blog: Microservices Authorization 8 Best Practices

How the OMS Microservices will work

Individual services involving many business channels during the order management process form the backbone of large-scale systems. Microservices is the perfect architecture for business services that are easy to automate like customer logins, authentications, payment processing, inventory search engines and customer notifications. 

These microservices are designed around the OMS, but built to serve as end-to-end independent platforms.

Are you looking for a microservices vendor? Call SayOne or drop us a note!

A sales representative /customer will create an order event on a mobile device or back office sales order system. In a microservices system, this event will kick off a series of OM services that will eliminate manual data entry and document management. This reduces paperwork and the cost of redundancy, while simultaneously increasing the accuracy of the order processing activity.

The first business service event will be one of storing and saving order data in the database. This database which contains customer and vendor records acts as the CRM. The stored data can be used in any internal general ledger activity concerning account history, customer terms, billing, discounts, payment processing, and promotional codes.

Read our blog Why have big companies like Amazon and Netflix adopted Microservices?

The microservices architecture model provides wide visibility for the entire OM process starting from the initial customer order to internal fulfillment actions such as invoicing, stock reorders, inventory caching, and payment. All business services communications that are required to allocate, manage, pick, package, and ship orders are automated across the different inventory classes and available SKU assets.

The documentation required for billing, the carriers, and scheduling is formulated as a delivery event. A carrier event processed by the OMS helps to control shipping status and creates updates for the customer and the departments that are involved. This service can be designed to monitor real-time delivery status when there are omnichannel business supply chains involving more than one brick-and-mortar inventory, warehouse, and region. If there is a delay because of bad weather or there is a change in carrier or freight classifications, then the OMS is designed to communicate only the latest updated billing/payment events.

Download our eBook “Porting from Monolith to Microservices – Is the Shift Worth It”.

A service event can be designed to create automated customer service notifications confirming the order event, send communications via email, and allow for order tracking. When the delivery is complete, customer service notifications can turn to help requests/follow-up services that may involve refunds, returns, exchanges, or tracking customer rewards points. 

The microservices system can also include a series of actions starting with the order event, measuring and analyzing internal analytics related to the business processes, performance and digital advertising data, sales trends, and CRM metrics.

Do you think that your organization would benefit from shifting to microservices? Call us today!

How SayOne can Assist in Microservices Development

At SayOne, our integrated teams of developers service our clients with microservices that are fully aligned with the future of the business or organization. The microservices we design and implement are formulated around the propositions of Agile and DevOps methodologies. Our system model focuses on individual components that are resilient, fortified, and highly reliable.

We design microservices for our clients in a manner that assures future success in terms of scalability and adaptation to the latest technologies. They are also constructed to accept fresh components easily and smoothly, allowing for effective function upgrades cost-effectively.

Download and read our eBook “MICROSERVICES- A Short Guide”.

Our microservices are constructed with reusable components that offer increased flexibility and offer superior productivity for the organization/business. We work with start-ups, SMBs, and enterprises and help them to visualize the entire microservices journey and also allow for the effective coexistence of legacy systems of the organization.

Our microservices are developed for agility, efficient performance and maintenance, enhanced performance, scalability, and security.

Conclusion

For organizations and businesses looking to grow, expand, and also delight their customers by meeting their demands, a microservices architecture system seems to be the blueprint for success.