Strategies for Omnichannel Retail

Alternate titles: 

Engineering Seamless Journeys: Omnichannel Order Routing and Fulfillment Strategies for Retailers 

From POS to Doorstep: Inside the Systems Powering Omnichannel Retail 

In today’s dynamic retail environment, customer expectations are evolving faster than ever. Shoppers no longer distinguish between channels—they expect seamless, personalized experiences whether browsing online, ordering via mobile apps, or picking up items in-store.  

Retail is rapidly transitioning into a multi-format, omnichannel environment. Consumers expect a unified product view, fast delivery, and minimal turnaround time. As a result, sales are now recorded through a variety of channels including e-commerce websites, mobile apps, tele-orders, fixed and mobile POS, and in-store kiosks. Designing robust order solutions requires retailers to factor in these diverse sales touchpoints. 

For retailers, this means crafting an integrated strategy that not only unifies multiple sales and fulfilment touchpoints but also ensures a consistent, intelligent order lifecycle from start to finish. This blog explores the considerations for omni channel customer journeys, core strategies, systems, and operational frameworks required to build effective omnichannel journeys that meet these modern demands.

The Evolving Retail Landscape 

Omnichannel Order Lifecycle 

Every omnichannel order follows three key stages: 

• Order Creation: Initiated from any channel, such as online, in-store, or call centers. 
• Order Sourcing: Inventory is reserved from a store or warehouse. 
• Order Fulfilment: The product is delivered or picked up. 

The interplay of these locations – originating, sourcing, and fulfilment – defines the order routing strategy. Notably: 

• For delivery orders, sourcing and fulfilment locations are the same. 
• For pickup orders, sourcing and fulfillment may differ if the pickup location lacks inventory.

Order Splitting and Reallocation 

When a single sourcing location cannot fulfill the entire order, order splitting is used to source items from multiple locations. If inventory is damaged or unavailable, the sourcing system updates the Order Management System (OMS), which can reallocate the affected order lines to alternate locations, subject to business logic and routing rules. 

Intelligent Order Routing

Effective order routing requires integration with systems that can evaluate inventory availability, the distance to the delivery or pickup location, business rules such as zonal preferences or location priorities, and optimal order distribution based on the sales velocity of products. Oracle Retail Order Broker facilitates intelligent routing by dynamically assigning the most suitable sourcing location. It is natively integrated with Oracle POS and Oracle Order Management systems, enabling seamless support for end-to-end omnichannel journeys.

Flexible Payment Models for Delivery Orders 

Usually, for the delivery orders, Retailers prefer to have options for upfront payment and then sourcing and fulfilments but there are specific business needs to allow flexibility in payments in terms of accepting the payment at the customer’s delivery address when the item is finally delivered.  

This requires the Omni Channel Order Solutions: 

• To keep Order Payment to be kept open even after the order is fulfilled. Or 
• To have some option to mark the order as fulfilled after confirming the payment (keeping shipment and fulfilment as separate for delivery orders) 
• To fulfil the order as per regular flow with some make-shift tender, and then match the tender amount with the amount paid by the customer through some tender mapping. This needs an overhead operational process to be designed 

Internal and External Transfers 

• For pickup orders with insufficient store inventory, internal transfers are triggered from sourcing to pickup location. 
• For delivery orders, external shipments are initiated from the sourcing location to the customer. 

Systems must update order line statuses and trigger necessary shipments based on these fulfilment paths. 

Shipment and Delivery Integration 

For delivery orders, integration with third-party shippers is essential for: 

• Alerts to be sent to the shipper companies, for item to be picked by the delivery agents from the sourcing location. 
• Shipment status to be updated via APIs or webhooks. 
• Customers to be notified via email or SMS. 

Invoicing and Compliance 

Multiple countries may have different invoicing requirements.  Retailers need to meet such diverse invoicing requirements for order journeys. 

• Invoices may be generated at the time of payment or dispatch. 
• Invoicing may have requirements of generating different types of documents like shipping invoice or customer final invoice etc basis the type of orders (delivery/pick up and B2B/B2C orders). 
• Retailers prefer to have centralized system for all invoicing requirements that can be integrated with other modules 
• Financials are to be updated to central merchandizing and accounting system along with the invoicing details 

Order Cancellations and Returns 

Depending on business requirements, order cancellations can be permitted at various stages – such as when the order is new, assigned, or reserved. Once an order is shipped, returns must follow a structured reverse logistics process. A robust solution should support full or partial cancellations across all channels, enable credit note generation, process customer refunds, and manage reverse inventory reservations upon cancellation. Additionally, it must interface seamlessly with invoicing and refund systems through APIs or middleware to ensure smooth and automated transaction handling. 

Real-Time Order Visibility 

The system should support real-time visibility and updates to the order record from across the channels. 

Middleware often facilitates: 

• Triggering external tasks (e.g., shipment updates, emails) 
• Customer notifications with order and line-level statuses 

Emails can be triggered from any centralized system having email generation capabilities. 

Processing of Orders created by other Retailers

Once built, the same order infrastructure can be leveraged to process orders created by other retailers, allowing external partner orders to be received and fulfilled through the retailer’s network. These orders typically require mapping items and stock to external locations, assigning orders accordingly, and managing invoicing, returns, and cancellation processes, along with handling financial reconciliations with other retailers. This setup enables retailers to participate in third-party marketplaces or even create their own marketplace using the existing order infrastructure. 

Operational Intelligence and Reporting 

Usually, businesses require visibility into: 

• Orders open for a long time 
• Cancelled, fulfilled, and unfulfilled orders 
• Orders stuck in transit due to system issues 
• Return and reverse logistics data 

Comprehensive reporting ensures continuous optimization of the omnichannel order strategy. Today’s retail requires intelligent systems that can churn the large amounts of data, provide business insights, and perform predictive analytics, helping businesses. This predictive analytics can be fed to various order-creating systems to increase the revenue potential for the business and to increase operational efficiencies. 

Foundation Data Requirements 

Accurate, near real-time item-location visibility is critical for effective routing and allocation: 

• All systems across the locations should have real-time inventory visibility. 
• The solution must consider the initial data load and delta updates for the order routing decision, to allocate the orders to specific locations depending on the zonal allocation or stock position, or the distance of the sourcing location from the customer’s address or pick up location address. 

There is also a need to have some operational processes in place for addressing some corner scenarios like reverse logistics when the customer is not available for delivery, payment failed for a cash-on-delivery order, the customer refuses to receive the order, or items are missing in transit during the delivery. 

Strategic Goals of Omnichannel Order Solutions

An ideal omnichannel order management solution should strive to reduce stock-outs, optimize sourcing for both speed and cost, and minimize inventory handling along with logistics overhead. It must enable seamless processes for cancellations, invoicing, and refunds while maintaining consistent communication with customers. Compliance with regulatory and fiscal requirements is essential, alongside real-time inventory synchronization across all channels to ensure accurate availability. A cloud-native architecture enhances scalability, resilience, and deployment speed, while API-first integrations streamline connectivity across order management, POS, ERP, and logistics systems. Additionally, leveraging AI-driven insights and automation enables smarter order routing, fraud detection, and demand forecasting. Finally, a unified order view for both customers and associates helps improve transparency and overall service experience.