Insight into Super Retail Group’s award-winning Order Management System
Super Retail Group’s Order Management System (OMS) is the winner of the Best Mass-Market Project in the iTnews Benchmark Awards.
An OMS is a digital way to manage the lifecycle of an order. It tracks all the information and processes, including order entry, inventory management and fulfillment.
Peter Ross, ISGO Senior Manager for Technical Delivery, explains that the OMS reduces the fulfilment cost of online orders, improves the customer experience, keeps their delivery promise, and allows SRG to have a single, accurate, and real-time view of inventory availability across the supply chain.
“It offers visibility to both the business and the customer,” said Mr Ross.
“Having near real-time insight into inventory position allows the business to anticipate problems and provide a better customer experience.
“We can see what is in stock, in transit and current demand levels.
Prior to this project, SRG’s online fulfilment performance was impacted by poor order execution, which in turn led to poor customer experiences.
“The new system provides sophisticated order orchestration logic, routing orders to the cheapest fulfilment location capable of achieving our customer promise,” said Mr Ross.
“It’s a cloud-native solution, which has delivered a key component of our corporate strategy, to build a fit for purpose, integrated, omni-retail supply chain.”
Brian Townshend, General Manager Omni Retail, says that SRG has a rigorous focus on the customer and an integrated supply chain across all stores and distribution centres.
“This OMS has contributed to an improved customer experience,” confirmed Mr Townshend.
“SRG can now provide a consistent and accurate delivery promise. We have more confidence in packages being delivered on time so we can keep our promise to our customers.
“This new system also streamlines our capacity to send an order in the one package, rather than split orders.
“We are already seeing reduced costs related to staff addressing customer queries and complaints.
The business case for the OMS project was first approved in October 2019 and SRG completed the last brand go-live in September 2020. The team had to adapt and pivot during the COVID-19 to ensure the work continued, with international team members returning to their home countries and others isolating immediately for months.
Mr Townshend shared with Unwrap that that the OMS project was accelerated as a result of online sales going through the roof during COVID. There was no denying the benefits of implementing the OMS, and no better time.
“COVID-19 hit us hard in the middle of the project. We had to be agile and constantly review our plans.
“Initially we wanted to test the OMS with Supercheap Auto New Zealand, our smallest brand in the Group. Instead, we launched the OMS with our largest brand, Rebel.
“By launching the OMS with our largest brand, it allowed our team to monitor and ensure we can consistently handle the significant online growth.”
With 45% of online sales being click and collect, it was important for SRG to effectively integrate the OMS with existing systems, especially websites, to better understand stores’ capacity to fulfill online orders.
“The OMS helps our team service our customers in a more sophisticated way. We can better answer questions such as what is the quickest and cheapest way to fulfill an order or what is the capacity of a store or distribution centre to fulfill an order?”
“Generally, online orders were less profitable than our in-store sales. The cost of fulfillment was the main disparity.
“This project was critical to underpin profitability of our online orders,” said Mr Townshend.
“I congratulate the OMS project team for the way they innovated and added value to Super Retail Group,” added Mr Ross.
“As we continue to face the pandemic and its challenges, the speed and scale of our digital capabilities continues to increase.
“Through innovation, ambition, and the passion of our team members, we are meeting our ever-growing customer demands,” concluded Mr Ross.
Super Retail Group now have a dedicated order management team looking after the system, all of whom were involved in the project delivery.
The business case for phase 2 of the OMS project is in the pipeline and currently being prioritised in conjunction with the other big pieces of portfolio work on the roadmap for FY22 and beyond.
