Adapt quickly and fulfill efficiently with Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management
Digital commerce is reshaping every step in the supply chain. Consumers today expect seamless omnichannel buying and after-purchase experiences with multiple fast delivery options.
Many organizations, however, are struggling to modernize operations to keep up with the growth. In fact, a recent study found that nearly 61 percent1 of companies expect over half of their sales to come from digital channels in the next couple of years.
At the same time, over 50 percent2 of the companies felt that their supply chains were unprepared to meet growing digital commerce needs. A lot of them experienced delays due to longer fulfillment times and slower distribution due to the pandemic, and almost 37 percent3 of companies felt that they lacked the supply chain technology they needed to meet the growing digital commerce needs. For 52 percent4 of these organizations, enabling cost-efficient fulfillment was a key priority.
Today we are introducing a new Dynamics 365 application that can accelerate omnichannel transformation across order and fulfillment. Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management adapts quickly and meets future order and fulfillment complexities while supporting contemporary methods like buying online for in-store or curbside pickup.
This purpose-driven supply chain solution allows organizations to centrally manage the entire lifecycle of an order from intake to fulfillment so that they can respond quickly to constraints and disruptions and still deliver on the order promise—unlocking the new ways to meet customer needs, be more responsive, and adapt new business models to stay profitable and relevant. Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management can integrate with existing enterprise systems, improving time to value and interoperability.
Let’s look at how our latest innovation enables businesses to achieve higher service levels while also driving efficiencies and savings across the supply chain.
Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is built on a modern open platform that can provide the flexibility companies need today to capture orders from any order source like online e-commerce, marketplace, mobile apps, or traditional sources like EDI and fulfill them from their own warehouse, 3PL, stores, or drop-ship with vendors or other delivery fulfillment partners.
Order management is a mature space, and the current solutions in the market are extremely rigid. With Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, companies can use out of the box pre-built connectors from an ecosystem of more than 200 Microsoft Power Platform connectors to add new order intake, fulfillment, and delivery method. It helps them easily scale during peak demand.
Deliver on your order promise
The solution leverages AI to give real-time recommendations for how to fulfill each order based on existing inventory and will provide information and insights into the implications of possible choices.
This uses exception-based management so that while business users have complete visibility and access to adjust and change any order path, only those exceptions are raised for business decisions. With machine learning, the system learns how the business user reacts to each exception and learns to provide better recommendations next time.
Get real-time inventory visibility
One of the key differentiators of Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is an integrated real-time inventory visibility service, a microservice built on Microsoft Dataverse that is highly scalable and extensible, providing a single, global view of the inventory positions across all legal entities.
The fulfillment orchestration engine uses this real-time inventory data to optimize fulfillment and, in the process, ensure optimal stock levels across the channel to improve cash flow.
Manage the entire order lifecycle
To deliver a true omnichannel experience, organizations must centrally manage the entire lifecycle of the product from capture to delivery. Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management provides real-time visibility into each step of the order journey. It provides fulfillment insights in real-time through customizable and integrated dashboards so that the supply chain team can take the right countermeasures to overcome constraints and continue to track and improve operational efficiency to deliver to the customer on time.
Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management also breaks down silos so that the organizations get a single view of the order even if they use multiple systems across their subsidiaries and headquarters. The system also helps organizations streamline the return processes. Whether returns are collected at a retail store, fulfillment center, or service center, returns can be initiated through an app, online, or at the store.
The other key differentiator is that this solution is truly built for the business user so that they don’t have to rely on IT every time order flows need to be changed. The supply chain team can leverage the embedded policy designer to design the rules to optimize their business processes.
They can use the journey orchestration designer tools to model and automate the response to fulfillment constraints and leverage machine learning to influence the flow of the order to optimize it. Whenever an organization predicts or detects constraints in their fulfillment network, this helps them proactively overcome the bottlenecks and drive efficiencies across the supply chain—all while meeting deliveries on time and in full.
Get up and running quickly
Lastly, the onboarding to Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is done using a guided experience. Organizations today want to get up and running soon so that they can immediately start to drive efficiency in their fulfillment processes before rolling out worldwide. Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is a software as a service (SaaS) running on the Microsoft cloud.
Organizations can scale during peak order volumes by supporting various order intake, fulfillment, and delivery partners using pre-built connectors. This order orchestration engine is built on Power Platform, which has more than 200 pre-built connectors, allowing any business user to instantly connect into this ecosystem. In addition, we will continue to expand the ecosystem of connectors by working with design partners like Orderful, BigCommerce, Magento, Flexe, HighJump, Vertex, Flintfox, Avalara, etc. As we progress with the release we’ll announce further collaborations.
It can easily integrate with your existing enterprise systems such as any ERP, CRM, or warehouse management and fulfillment system and seamlessly synchronize data using Dataverse. It has no dependency on other Dynamics 365 products, and it works seamlessly with both Dynamics 365 and non-Dynamics 365 business applications. It is truly going to enable customers to reimagine omnichannel fulfillment by making it automated, intelligent, and frictionless. This will be available in preview on April 30, 2021, and will be generally available on July 30, 2021.
“We are constantly expanding the number of ways by which customers can purchase our products as well as number of fulfillment options to meet their needs. With Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, we can centrally orchestrate fulfillment and optimize the order journeys across all sources and scenarios. This will enable us to proactively respond to fulfillment risks and constraints while delivering on the order promise”—Jeff Suellentrop, Vice President, Enterprise Architecture, Digital (DTC) and Programs, Breville
Learn more
- Contact us at D365OMS@microsoft.com to learn more and preview the solution
- Watch the on-demand session Intelligent fulfillment orchestration for optimized delivery at Microsoft Ignite and the Microsoft Ignite keynote.
- Read more in the Dynamics 365 Microsoft Ignite announcement blog.
1Base: 470 global decision makers of digital transformation strategies and operations as it relates to the retail experience for customers with channel engagement from online and offline
2,3,4Base: 624 global decision makers of digital transformation strategies and operations as it relates to the retail experience for their retail experience for customers
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, November 2020
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