The Essential Guide to Fluent OMS: From Basics to Advanced Features
Today's consumers demand quick, reliable delivery. Many businesses still use outdated order management systems that create fulfillment silos and poor visibility. Fluent OMS stands out as the first cloud platform built specifically to fit your omnichannel fulfillment strategy. This distributed OMS gives you the agility you need for total inventory visibility and smooth fulfillment throughout your operation.
A distributed order management system differs from traditional solutions in key ways. DOM systems excel at three critical tasks that an ERP simply can't handle: managing inventory availability at scale, implementing precise sourcing logic, and automating manual processes. Fluent Order Management helps you adapt business processes quickly to manage fulfillment locations and networks. It orchestrates orders across channels, locations, and partners to optimize delivery, customer experience, and profitability.
This piece covers everything about Fluent OMS, from simple functions to advanced features. The system's impressive 98.6% customer retention rate proves its value in today's complex commerce world.
Understanding Fluent OMS and Its Core Functions
Fluent OMS is a complete distributed order management system built on a cloud-native, API-first architecture. The system's Order Module powers advanced omnichannel sourcing and fulfillment strategies through its robust order management capabilities.
The platform serves three main purposes. It gives you an accurate, unified view of inventory availability. It processes orders from digital channels using smart sourcing logic. It handles the complete order lifecycle from initial processing to returns.
Traditional ERP systems just route orders to fulfillment centers. Fluent OMS takes a different approach by coordinating orders across your network. The system looks at distance, stock levels, delivery times, and processing backlogs to find the best fulfillment strategy [9, 10].
The system's data objects, known as entities, use GraphQL for management through mutations and queries that create, update, and retrieve data. These entities drive automated fulfillment workflows throughout the process.
Fluent OMS brings Order Management and Inventory Management together. The platform constantly processes inventory data from stores, distribution centers, and 3PLs. This gives near real-time product availability to all sales channels while using configurable buffers and exclusions to display accurate stock levels.
How Fluent OMS Solves Modern Fulfillment Challenges
Retailers today face major fulfillment challenges, with a lack of live inventory visibility leading their concerns. These challenges multiply as businesses grow their product range and delivery options, while older systems don't deal very well with the pace of change.
Fluent OMS tackles these issues through its live inventory management system. The platform combines inventory data from warehouses, stores, and third-party vendors to provide immediate visibility across channels. This complete view has helped retailers like Freedom Australia reduce order cancellations by 85%.
The Order Orchestration engine picks the best fulfillment locations by analyzing availability, speed, and cost. This approach helped retailers like ALDO fulfill seven times more orders during peak sales without changing operations. The platform showed its strength during holiday shopping seasons by processing over 675 orders per second without interruption.
Fluent OMS goes beyond simple routing with advanced fulfillment features:
- Split shipment optimization: Fluent uses informed rules based on profitability, customer tier, and inventory turns instead of making simple yes/no decisions
- Omnichannel fulfillment: Support for BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store), curbside pickup, and ship-from-store models
- Fulfillment cost reduction: Psycho Bunny cut split shipments from 35-40% to 17% and reduced short shipments from 30% to 2%
Fluent OMS helps B2B operations overcome ERP limitations by managing orders across channels—EDI, online portals, marketplaces, and field sales. This reduces complexity and manual work significantly.
Advanced Features and Integration Capabilities
Fluent OMS stands out with its adaptable integration features that naturally connect with your existing technology ecosystem. The platform's architecture integrates with APIs and connectors to provide live inventory visibility across sales channels. It also connects with Warehouse Management Systems, carrier services, and ERPs.
Fluent's integration strategy centers around a dual API approach. The platform uses REST-based APIs to handle authentication, plugin management, and workflow updates. The domain-related functions use GraphQL to create entities, retrieve information, and manage orders. This allows clients to fetch exactly the data they need.
The system shines with its event-driven architecture. The OMX Workflow framework powers business logic by receiving information through events and communicating outward using webhooks. A dedicated integration layer between Fluent OMS and third-party systems handles this transformation.
Companies looking for quick deployment can use Fluent's pre-built connectors to major ecommerce platforms. These include Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, Adobe Commerce, and Commerce Tools. The platform handles up to 500,000 allocation decisions per minute, delivering enterprise-grade performance.
Fluent goes beyond simple connectivity with advanced sourcing strategies:
- Shipping from locations with the oldest stock
- Routing specific products to designated distribution centers
- Factoring in safety stock levels by product, category, or location
Conclusion
Fluent OMS is changing how businesses handle their order management problems. The platform's distributed architecture tackles major issues that regular ERPs don't deal with very well. The system can process over 675 orders per second, which is a big deal as it means that it meets what modern commerce needs.
Live inventory visibility is the essence of what makes Fluent valuable. Businesses can see everything clearly across all their channels, locations, and partners. This cuts down cancellations and makes customers happier. Smart order orchestration rules look at many factors to balance cost, speed, and efficiency in making the best fulfillment decisions.
The system's event-driven architecture and dual API approach make it easy to work with existing tech setups. Ready-made connections to major ecommerce platforms help businesses get started faster and see value sooner. This adaptability explains why 98.6% of customers stick with the system in today's complex commerce world.
Companies using Fluent OMS see real improvements in their fulfillment operations. They ship fewer split orders, automate manual work, and spend less on fulfillment - as shown by successful rollouts in retail setups of all sizes.
Building great omnichannel operations needs more than just good tech. You need a system built specifically for today's complex fulfillment challenges. Fluent OMS delivers exactly that, helping businesses meet customer expectations while running smoothly. The system works great for both B2C and B2B operations, providing the orchestration layer needed to succeed in modern commerce.
