Does an “All in One” Software Solution Really Exist?
15-20 years ago companies were often times buying most of their software from a single vendor. Order management software vendors were supplying everything – AR, AP and GL modules, manifesting, order entry and customer service, warehousing functions and a full reporting suite. Over time best of breed approaches were becoming more prevalent as niche vendors were filling in the gaps and it became easier for order management vendors to develop generic API’s. But several factors are driving people back towards finding a single order management systems vendor that can deliver everything. It’s a way to reduce IT costs, decrease the number of desperate systems/vendors and data silos to name a few.
But is an all in one order management system reality or utopia? Does it exist? The short answer to whether or not it exists is a definitive maybe… Read more of this story
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Hello Brian,
Interesting Blog post. I’m not sure if there are any single source vendors that you are talking about, especially for the SMB market. For the enterprise retailer there maybe with some companies that want to take over all the back office actions.
Seems like putting a lot of eggs in one basket, possibly unnecessarily. Better have some very strict performance guarantees with teeth and lots of Key Performance Indicators to measure the service delivery.
Watch out for data lock-in. Maybe you find this vendor, use them for a bit…don’t like them…but can’t extradite yourself from their clutches (Because you can’t find a second source or have gotten rid of the employees that could have done it).
If you can’t find this perfect vendor maybe change the criteria and look for “data compatibility” – make sure your component vendors all talk to each-other and are trusted by one another not to point fingers if there is a problem and instead buckle down and fix it.
I know Shipwire works with over 30 ecommerce shopping carts, payment systems and marketplaces so that merchants can quickly snap their e-commerce tools into our fulfillment house and get up and operating.
Cheers,
Nate
Shipwire order fulfillment
Warehouses in the U.S., Canada and UK
http://www.shipwire.com/trial for a FREE trial