An order management system decides where each order goes and keeps track of it until it reaches the customer. For a brand selling omnichannel direct-to-consumer, B2B and retail from shared stock, that decision is rarely simple. One order ships from a 3PL, another from a store, and a third splits across two warehouses because one item is on backorder.
When the storefront, the OMS and the fulfilment partners are not properly connected, people fill the gap. They export orders, rekey tracking numbers and answer where-is-my-order emails that the systems should have answered for them. Integration work removes that manual layer.
What the integration covers
- Order capture. Orders from your website, marketplaces, wholesale portal and POS arriving in one place with consistent fields.
- Routing rules. Logic that picks a fulfilment location by stock, distance, shipping method, channel or customer type.
- Warehouse and 3PL connections. Orders sent to each partner in the format they expect, with confirmations and tracking returned automatically.
- Inventory sync. Available stock pushed back to every channel so you stop selling what you cannot ship.
- Exceptions. Split shipments, partial cancellations, address problems and backorders flagged to a person with the context needed to act.
Choosing the right setup
Not every brand needs a dedicated OMS. Some can run routing inside Shopify Plus or their ERP. Others need middleware such as Pipe17 or Patchworks to connect several 3PLs, marketplaces and an ERP without custom code for each one. We map your order flows first, recommend the lightest setup that handles them and document every rule so your operations team can change it later.
How we deliver it
We start with real orders, including the awkward ones. Each flow is built and tested against sample data from your partners before it goes live, and we run it alongside your current process until the numbers match. Monitoring and alerts are part of the build, so a failed handoff is caught the same day rather than when a customer calls.
Order data usually needs to reach finance too, which is where ERP integration comes in. Returns follow the same path in reverse, covered under returns management. Both sit within our omnichannel and B2B commerce service.
