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Fluent Order Managements drives real-time business and customer benefits

Jamie Cairns, Chief Strategy Officer at Fluent Commerce, on how its order management platform enhances operational efficiency and customer experience.

Fluent Commerce is a global software company focused on distributed order management. Its cloud-native platform, Fluent Order Management, provides accurate and near real-time inventory data visibility, order orchestration, fulfilment optimisation, instore pick and pack, customer service, and reporting to transform fulfilment into a competitive advantage.

As Jamie Cairns, Chief Strategy Officer at Fluent Commerce explains, the process of managing orders begins with inventory data. “Being able to unify a view of inventory and then syndicating that inventory data out across a range of different channels lets you improve the customer experience,” Cairns comments.

That, in turn, has a range of different operational efficiency benefits, reducing costs by reducing split shipments, cancelled orders, and customer service calls.

As Cairns describes, order management represents an opportunity for retailers and B2B organisations to harness inventory data to provide real-world benefits. One of their recent innovations, Fluent Big Inventory, is about unifying in near real-time those inventory sources, enabling all systems to become inventory aware.

“It is not just about enhancing the order fulfilment process, which is typically what has been the domain of an order management system,” Cairns explains. “It’s about making inventory data available to other systems, like search, as well and ultimately being able to personalise search results based on inventory.” With changing customer preferences in recent years, brands have had to adapt quickly. As Cairns explains, Fluent Order Management not only provides a robust software-as-a-service platform, but at a lower total cost so businesses can move quickly and meet customer expectations efficiently.

During the COVID-19 pandemic when stores were closed, Fluent Order Management enabled businesses to adapt quickly. “Stores still had inventory and there were huge spikes in online demand,” Cairns explains. “Our customers were able to adapt in a matter of a day to completely change their fulfilment workflows.

“Digital agility is essential,” he concludes. “We are not trying to predict what the future is, but to provide a toolset that allows you to adapt as the future evolves.”