Fluent Order Management

My main use case for Fluent Order Management  is as an enterprise order management system for retailers, brand manufacturers, and distributors, and it is used for inventory availability, order fulfillment, dynamic sourcing, connections and integrations into and through a commerce ecosystem and all omni-channel fulfillment operations.

For a retailer, I have implemented Fluent Order Management  to be their global inventory. For this retailer, I set up global inventory visibility and inventory as a service for commerce and marketplace, call center, and a number of other B2B channels, and I also enabled dynamic sourcing across a number of facilities and stores and am able to track and monitor real-time velocity of demand against store inventory to broadcast demand across other stores within the region. I also have hooked in all integrations to demand planning and ERP , WMS , payment systems, fraud, and other systems, and the outcome was an 80% reduction in split shipments, a 98% inventory accuracy rate, and an increase of sales by 25%.

The best features that Fluent Order Management offers are the extensibility and configurable workflows that are easy to navigate, and additionally, they have built in some AI components that enable users to optimize and accelerate development, while Fluent Store meets the base level omni-channel criteria for most retail chains.

The extensibility and configurable workflows allow a setup so that a specific customer's requirements are able to be captured and managed without customization.

I would say that Fluent Commerce platform has been invested in heavily from a net new feature perspective where they're optimizing some of the major performance issues in the industry, such as large inventory loads processing in very little time, and the ability to optimize order volume velocities and ensure a retailer is performant regardless of size and channel demand.

I would say that Fluent Order Management system could be improved mainly through the user interface for the console, and I would say even the React components of the store, while they are able to be modified, do not necessarily have an optimized appearance and feel, so clients need to be very specific about how they want to show their branding and their workflows within those screens.

The reason I do not give it a 10 is because I believe it has some salient features that could be enabled that are just not part of the base product, so there are some fundamental use cases that are not out of the box that I believe are necessary for this solution to operate effectively.

I have been using Fluent Order Management since 2019.

Fluent Order Management is stable.

Fluent Order Management's scalability is very well supported, and depending on the time of year, the Fluent team extends and operates to ensure that its client's cloud platform is able to scale with its volume increases, whether that is holiday or other peak periods that a client will share with Fluent.

Fluent's customer support is adequate, and they define the severity of the issues, so sometimes priorities for organizations do not have the same priority as what Fluent says they are.

The main drivers to switching to Fluent typically are large historical monolithic providers such as Sterling or Manhattan or companies that were heavily reliant on ERP  such as Oracle and SAP.

I think one of the biggest savings is time to value, meaning Fluent Order Management application is not a large lift for an organization to implement, or at least using Pivotalry services, it has not been a large lift, so that I can typically get to a working solution within two to four months, and the other equations and statistics are truly around a trusted inventory availability metric, meaning that I am able to establish and showcase near real-time inventory across warehouses, stores, and other channels.

As an SI, I am not in commercial negotiations for the application, and the delivery, as I have stated, is typically a four to six-month time range to get it up and operating.

As an SI, I have seen a large interest in headless cloud-based OMS applications, and Fluent Commerce has become a mainstay as one of those prolific platforms that service a multitude of use cases regardless of sector, meaning whether it is retail, manufacturing, CPG, and B2B, I am able to leverage Fluent Commerce in meeting the demands of each of those different sector use cases.

I provided examples earlier for one of my clients that received a significant reduction in split shipments, increased inventory accuracy, and an overall increase in sales based on a trusted view of reliable inventory.

I am a partner and reseller.

The other main competitors I would say to Fluent are Kibo and OneStock .

I would rate Fluent Order Management an eight out of ten, and I would say that it meets the standard OMS use cases that are required for the majority of businesses to optimize their order processing; however, it has some limitations.

I would say look for a competent SI who has historically done successful Fluent implementations and also be prepared to have Fluent supported, as it is not a traditional application that companies can support with just normal operations resources.

Governance  and security of any AI is not necessarily leveraged at the AI level but at the organization level, so trying to apply governance and security around AI is not the job of AI, it is the job of the organization to ensure that it is being leveraged correctly and not using it in a cavalier manner.

I think from Fluent MCP perspective, there is a robust opportunity to accelerate delivery from a base-level perspective, and I think that you require experienced users if you want to get very proficient with it.

My main use case for Fluent Order Management  is to manage orders from order creation until order delivery. I use it primarily for sourcing logic; when an order comes to Fluent Order Management , I have to decide from which fulfiller, warehouse, or location that order should get fulfilled. I route the orders to all those fulfillers. If there is a split, I do that split logic to fulfill all the orders and then I send the orders back to the fulfiller to fulfill it. I also manage the returns, cancellations, and basically, I manage the entire order journey of any orders.

A specific example of how I use Fluent Order Management for order routing or splitting involves getting an order with one line item with the quantity as ten. I have a warehouse that has those items, but they do not have the complete quantity. Suppose one of the warehouses has seven line items, meaning seven quantities, and the other warehouse has eight quantities. To select from which warehouse that particular order should get fulfilled, I check the inventory; both warehouses have the items, but not the complete quantity. I then rate it based on the total quantity of that item and the proximity of that particular warehouse from the customer. In this case, if the warehouse with eight quantities is nearest to the customer's location, I assign seven quantities to that nearest warehouse and the remaining three quantities to the other warehouse. This is how I split the order into two fulfillments, and I send orders to both warehouses with their respective quantities. That is how I do the split logic.

Another use case for me in Fluent Order Management is that I also handle cancellations. For cancellation, I have provided one custom button in the Fluent Order Management screen that allows me to cancel the order. Once I cancel it, I cancel all entities involved in that order, such as the order entity, fulfillment, and any captured items. After canceling everything, I send a webhook to SAP, which is my overall business management system that manages the complete order process, from product to accounting. I send those details to SAP that the order has been canceled, and they cancel it from their end as well.

The best feature that Fluent Order Management offers, which stands out for me, is the sourcing logic. Fluent Order Management is seventy or eighty percent customizable; I can customize most of the things. Now they have increased the React component SDK where I can customize with my own React components. Therefore, the customer can have the screen as per their requirement. There is not a fixed UI screen; I can customize it with my own style and requirement. I find this fascinating because I have not seen this level of customization in any other OMS system. Fluent Order Management has positively impacted my organization by eliminating overselling. After implementing Fluent Order Management as the order management solution, I can sell only up to the inventory stock. Previously, for the client for whom I implemented this, they were overselling their product, with many mismatches in inventory. If they had ten quantities available, they accepted orders for fifteen or sixteen, resulting in overselling. Now with the implementation of Fluent Order Management, I have a kind of buffer system; if I have ten quantities, I will have available only five for sale. Once I complete that five quantities, I will not accept further orders. This approach has restricted overselling and improved the customer experience.

There are certain improvements needed in Fluent Order Management that I think could enhance the system. Recently, I faced a configuration issue where Fluent Order Management mostly uses camel case conventions, but for a particular item, they used a plain format, making it hard for me to debug. Additionally, they should enhance the logging system because sometimes it becomes difficult to obtain the correct error information.

I believe the existing documentation for Fluent Order Management is adequate, as it is available on their website, but improving it would be beneficial. It would be better to have direct chat support with an agent for quick solutions, as right now, if I need help, I have to create a FRDS ticket and then wait for some days. This process can be time-consuming, so a direct chatbot or some support agent could lead to quicker resolutions.

I have been using Fluent Order Management for around five years, as I started my career as a Fluent Order Management developer, so I am still working on that.

For integration, Fluent Order Management uses webhooks. If I want to integrate it with any other system, I have a Fluent Order Management webhook. To integrate with other systems, I surely need a middleware because with the Fluent Order Management payload, I cannot customize the payload inside the Fluent Order Management SDK. I can send only the basic details such as the orders ID and some attributes in a specific format. To integrate it with another system, I need middleware that will receive the Fluent Order Management webhook payload, transform the payload to whatever system I am integrating with, and then forward it there. That is how Fluent Order Management integration works. If an external system wants to communicate with Fluent Order Management, I can either use the connector SDK, share GraphQL mutation to the external system, or do it using event syncs, which is basically REST API calls. This is how an external system can connect with Fluent Order Management.

I measured the reduction in overselling through improved structured processing in Fluent Order Management. Although I do not remember the exact metrics, I do recall that overselling was prevalent due to their legacy OMS, but I was primarily involved in the implementation. Despite not managing all the data, I know the overselling was problematic and resulted in many order cancellations, leading to a poor customer experience. With Fluent Order Management, all processing happens more systematically, which has built my client's confidence.

For others looking into using Fluent Order Management, I would recommend it with an overall review rating of eight.