Does Your Order Management System Provide the Needed Reports?
You have just spent four months doing your homework to replace your aging order management system: gathering user requirements, writing an RFP, getting capable order management system vendors to bid on it, conducting demos and selecting the finalist. Yet there is one more activity that, if not done superbly, will shake management’s confidence that replacement of the old order management system will go smoothly. If you haven’t adequately studied how management at every level—from CEO to department managers—will get the information they’re used to having in order to run the business on a daily, weekly, monthly and year-end basis; your credibility could be in trouble. Even when business analysts feel they have done an adequate job of determining user requirements, the reporting area frequently gets cut short. There are a variety of reasons:
- In requirements and demos, users often spend too little time reviewing the entire order management system. Some feel they can do it in half a day. In reality, it is a two-day task—and even then you run the risk of not seeing everything.
- Vendors have stopped developing reports—yes, that’s right: no reports. “But we have online displays of data!” software vendors and less experienced users will say. Of course, when you go live with the new order management system, users line up at your door and want to know, “Where are those 10 important reports I had in the old order management system?”
- Then there’s the fact that management, while sponsoring the order management system replacement effort, takes little time to see whether their most important data is in the order management system or find out how they will get it from the new system. The biggest area of systems deficiency is in the lack of plans and historical data. Many order management systems have been developed without history by product, category, list segment, total business by year, or any other criteria. Management therefore has adapted with its own spreadsheets and Access systems. How will they get the information in the formats they will need?
- Order management system vendors convince the users that they can develop the reports they need with Crystal Reports, a query language or a data warehouse tool the vendor has included in the purchase agreement. But here’s the problem: Do you know how many and which reports will need to be replaced, or how much effort this will take? Our experience in implementing order management systems is that there are literally hundreds of reports that have to be replicated in order to be comparable. Recently, in working with a client on an order management system consulting project, we discovered there were over 200 key reports that would have to be replaced in some form.
Think about some of the reporting needs of various departments:
- How will Merchants get their merchandise performance reports? Do they require history? Plans? Vendor analysis? Category trending? Contribution to profit?
- Does your Marketing department require source code statistics? Do they need figures by channel performance in terms of demand, average order, etc.? How about conversion rates for first time to multi-buyers? Reactivation of inactive customer accounts? What about history and plans?
- Is there productivity analysis required for the Call Center? What about customer compliance and inquiry reporting from customer files?
- What data do you need to provide Fulfillment with reports about picker and packer productivity? How will they feed their departmental productivity and cost systems, which may be manual or spreadsheets?
I believe the point has been illustrated. Here’s what you need to do: Be proactive in soliciting specifics on what analysis is required. Collect the requirements and determine where each analysis will come from in the new order management system. Get users to sign off on the new system, confirming that it meets their needs. Cost out the time and effort required to provide all of this and make it a key ingredient in your order management system conversion work plan. I think you’ll find that reporting is an area of systems requirements on which many don’t spend enough time before going live.
If you’re interested in more information on order management systems and to speak with a consultant, contact Jeff Barry at jbarry@fcbco.com, or call (804) 740-8743. F. Curtis Barry & Co. is a national consulting firm that works with eCommerce, catalog, retail, manufacturing and wholesale distributors on projects focusing on supply chain strategies, order management systems, warehouse management systems, inventory management, third party logistics, and to reduce freight costs.
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