Deanna Kaufman, vice president of product management with Körber Supply Chain Software, argues that every order management system (OMS) today must be “borderless.”

The modern-day OMS must be “fully operational for cross-border commerce,” Kaufman says. That means providing a “seamless understanding” about where inventory is residing in the supply chain, so that providers can fulfill the right product, at the right time, to the right audience.

It’s more than a question of taking an order, finding the inventory and shipping it. In concert with a centralized information hub, such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool, the OMS must be able to handle additional complexities such as duties, taxes and even opportunities for saving money through duty drawback. In the process, companies can determine the quickest and most cost-efficient means of fulfilling a given order.

“At the end of the day,” Kaufman asks, “how can you lower your total cost of ownership and improve the cost of goods sold?”

None of this is possible, of course, without visibility of product throughout the supply chain. Only by seeing every location that holds inventory can a shipper determine the best place to access it. In some cases, that might mean drawing on safety stock. In others, it might involve vendor-managed inventory, which requires linking systems with the upstream partner. 

“It all comes down to what is the technology stack in the base you’re working with, and what your trading partners can do for you,” Kaufman says. Integrating with outside systems is becoming easier, she adds, but it still provides “an upside opportunity” for improving communications among all entities and pools of inventory.

Larger companies are likely to have systems in place for visibility, Kaufman says, but smaller shippers continue to struggle with obtaining the necessary data from upstream partners.