fabric has launched its updated fabric Order Management System (OMS). Native to the fabric commerce platform, fabric OMS unlocks commerce services like dropship, to streamline real-time inventory and order management. The company says this combination reimagines the commerce platform. The updated solution enables retailers to reduce stockouts and increase turnover and customer satisfaction. This is achieved by empowering customers, service agents, and store associates with a single source of truth for all orders and inventory, eliminating poor customer experience.
In a recent PwC survey, nearly 80% of American consumers prioritised speed, convenience, knowledgeable assistance and friendly service as crucial elements of a positive customer experience. Up until now, OMS has always been a separate system. fabric has weaved OMS into the heart of commerce and tied it together with foundational commerce services that bring shopping and fulfilment together to fuel those experiences.
According to Mike Micucci, CEO of fabric, “Commerce does not stop when you hit checkout – it just gets started. The challenge, particularly post pandemic, was to help omni channel retailers make sure that they could sell, fill and meet customers at their preferred location. This could be the physical store or digital store, whether it’s social, b2b, or across that entire ecosystem.”
“fabric is dedicated to empowering retailers with the tools they need to not only survive, but also thrive in the highly competitive retail landscape. We are enabling world-class shopping experiences for customers, anywhere, anytime. Our industry-first features, such as native OMS and now, integrated dropshipping, are designed to give retailers a strategic advantage during crucial holiday sales periods and beyond,” said Micucci.
Transforming retail operations on a modern platform
fabric OMS is designed for omnichannel retailers to meet the needs of consumers today. Together on one integrated platform, fabric commerce and OMS give customers the ability to mitigate timely out-of-stock risks. Offload slow-moving inventory with promotions and markdowns, reduce returns through improved catalogue enrichment, merchandise mixed collections of owned and dropship SKUs, and more.
Micucci adds, “We know that speed and performance drives customer conversion. Fabric is all about driving customer success, customers guidance. Our primary goals here are to ensure our services connect together really well to deliver a seamless customer journey. It’s all about continuing to drive speed and performance.”
Keith Schwartz, CEO, Bounteous said, “Our partnership with fabric has been instrumental in achieving transformational outcomes for our customers. During the critical holiday season, joint customers achieved >20% year-over-year increase in conversion rates during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Our deep partnership has also allowed us to quickly bring new commerce innovations to market. fabric’s new OMS, helps our joint customers win by enhancing operational and customer experience use cases. We look forward to the ongoing relationship with fabric to continue revolutionising commerce for everyone.”
The company says customers who migrated from legacy technologies to fabric experienced a 20% uptick in conversion rates. Similarly, customers that opened up inventory through fabric’s dropship service saw a 7% increase in average order values (AOV).
OMS unlocks dropshipping
fabric’s platform with native OMS, and now integrated dropshipping, offers key benefits that include:
- Diversified Product Selection: Dropshipping allows retailers to expand product assortment and sell on any channel through retailer-owned and vendor inventory. This is achieved without the cost and risk of purchasing inventory. Managing fulfilment routing and inventory can now be done in one place.
- Increased Speed: Suppliers can now onboard and approve inventory with clicks, not code. With real-time inventory visibility and updates across owned and dropshipped products, customers can get accurate product availability. This, in turn, prevents retailers from overselling, builds loyalty, and fuels repeat purchases.
- Faster Scale: Retailers can modernise individual commerce, order management, and dropship components in increments, achieving the shortest time to value without the usual risks, costs, or disruptions of a re-platform. fabric says an enterprise retailer using fabric’s dropshipping services saw a 13% increase in orders year-over-year. A 20% increase in GMV during the peak holiday season.
Enterprise Times: What this means for businesses
There’s an argument that brands, retailers and platform providers have taken order management for granted. It is not the most exciting part of the eCommerce experience. Not as glamourous as the front end, design and UX development phase. Nor is it as exciting as the final conversion process at checkouts. All the recent developments during the order management process such as click and collect, were the result of Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet OMS remains the foundational component of any modern commerce platform. Today’s retail landscape demands a delicate balance between innovation in customer engagement and operational efficiency. fabric says it is turning speed into a competitive advantage for enterprise retailers. This is achieved by integrating OMS with dropshipping to streamline inventory and order management across the network.
Increasingly, brands, retailers and merchants are not willing to sign up for Big Bang replatforming projects. What they are looking for are solutions to specific problems. They then add tools and applications to support their requirements. After investing in Salesforce or Adobe Commerce, an enterprise may still have a problem with it with inventory or order management. Hence the importance of the flexibility of fabric’s solutions, which can be integrated into existing technical stacks. Then, as enterprises evolve, they will add services to influence the outcome they want. Many analysts and industry commentators believe this is the future of technology. Perhaps fabric has stolen a march on many other technology companies embracing this approach.