For digitally native brands and retailers, the multichannel fulfillment lifecycle is easy to map and facilitate. Connecting your back-end ERP (enterprise resource planning) to your website, 3PL, and WMS (warehouse management system) enables any buyer, on any channel, to purchase your products. Where it continues to fail is when vendors provide that product, but are not digitally connected to retail fulfillment workflows.
If suppliers and retailers don’t think about their multichannel order fulfillment within the ecosystem of buying and selling, the lag in B2B impacts how well retailers can fulfill at scale.
Multichannel order fulfillment is the process of coordinating orders and shipments across e-commerce stores, online marketplaces, and retail stores. It’s the systematic orchestration of systems that hold inventory across warehouses so when a consumer purchases, there’s zero risk of being out of stock, and delivery operates as quickly as the ‘Amazon standard’.
In effect, the purpose of multichannel order fulfillment is that when a customer places an order, it’s delivered. For that to happen, there’s an orchestration of partners, systems, and inventory behind the scenes. In a modern setup, the order place enters an order orchestration that later determines how the order should be fulfilled.
The governing system ensures that the product is available before checkout can proceed and that it is where it currently exists. It could be in a distribution center, a retailer’s warehouse, or still with the supplier.
Once the order is confirmed, the system enables fulfillment and routing, either through a 3PL or by handing off to a retailer’s workflows. If it’s not in stock, the supplier may receive a dropship request.
All in real-time, once a product is sold, systems across the buyer and seller ecosystems are updated. Now, what’s online for the retail store and any channel the supplier uses is up to date.
The entire process requires orchestration. Multiple ERPs, warehouses, suppliers, and sales channels need to be able to communicate. Without that connectivity, multichannel fulfilment breaks the moment an order is placed.
Retailers’ multichannel fulfilment is entirely dependent on suppliers’ product availability, especially for retailers with e-commerce. Whether the product is stored within the retailer’s warehouse or drop shipped by the supplier, every order starts upstream.
The only way to “know” if a supplier has a SKU in stock is through digital connectivity. Some retailers enforce EDI, others accept CSV/FTP feeds, and others hope for the best.
But here’s the reality:
With EDI enforced, just because the retailer has an EDI portal, it doesn’t mean the supplier is digitally connected. Too often, they’re manually inputting product availability. Nothing is available in real-time.
With CSV/FTP, files are manually handled between systems, which is error-prone and never up-to-date. By the time a retailer uploads it to their system for the day, the supplier’s inventory has changed.
Without true connectivity between systems, when a customer places an order on a retailer’s e-commerce site, the retailer sends a dropship PO to the supplier. The supplier, whose CSV import is now outdated, has to send an “out of stock” notice, leaving the retailer to deal with cancellation, delays, and erosion of consumer loyalty. Retailers don’t enable fulfillment; suppliers do.
Consumers now expect to be able to purchase products online that reflect accurate inventory ready to ship at a moment's notice.
Retailers are now becoming increasingly selective of suppliers that are going to enable this with a fully connected supply chain.
For brands wanting to master multichannel fulfillment through retail partners and digital channels, the only way forward is through API-integrated workflows, also known as order orchestration. This is the principle that all systems in an ordered ecosystem can communicate. The supplier’s ERP is connected to their partners and systems, so inventory changes are reflected in real-time and are ready to ship.
Suppliers and smaller, independent retailers don’t have the same influence as big-box stores. They’re ultimately at the mercy of larger players who want to continue trading as usual. EDI works for stores because it’s what they’ve always done, and it’s a single system to manage.
Suppliers don’t have that luxury.
There’s EDI for some partners. An e-commerce store and marketplaces. Some partners order via email or a wholesale portal.
It’s disconnected, it’s messy, and it risks multichannel order fulfillment for the business and its buyers.
API-integrated workflows sound great, and there are viable options.
iPaaS tools are an effective way to customize connectivity. They provide API keys that can be used by technical teams to sync order lifecycles. For teams with simple workflows, it does the job. For B2B sellers, the nuances in rules, pricing, and exceptions can leave manual workflows in the mix.
Traditional Order Management Systems work within distributed order management, optimized for multichannel fulfillment, but neglecting the ways B2B order workflows need to run.
Order Orchestration Hubs come with pre-configured connections that unify how all orders enter and flow throughout a business. These offer an alternative for teams that don’t need another development project. Many, however, are built only for DTC (direct-to-consumer) workflows such as TikTok Shop and Shopify.
The standard for retail digitization is rising, but only internally. Competition is forcing adaptation, but it's widening the divide with partners. When digital ordering tools solely service end-of-order lifecycles, suppliers are not going to adopt them. Products across brick-and-mortar and digital channels cannot meet multichannel order fulfillment standards unless suppliers digitize their operations.
The supply chain is disconnected, and both sides need a better framework for how trade should operate.
Order orchestration, much like multichannel order fulfillment, is too often viewed within the DTC shipping workflow. True, effective order orchestration is the coordination of orders from production to delivery, requiring systems across partners to work together. The foundations of fulfilment are contingent on orchestration.
OrderEase considers how all orders flow across each touchpoint, optimizing for how B2B operations flow. Its orchestration capabilities account for EDI, emailed CSV, marketplace, e-commerce, and wholesale portals. It empowers B2B sellers with functionality that truly reflects requirements: complex pricing tiers, ERP integration, shipping and WMS integration. Every step of the process reflects unique business rules and works as a single system.
For both B2B brands and retailers to meet consumer expectations, both need to adopt order orchestration as a guiding principle for multichannel order fulfillment.
Instead of products being out of stock after a customer places an order, everything is updated in real-time. The supplier, selling through a retailer’s website, their own website, multiple other trading partners, and on marketplaces, can now fulfill at a moment’s notice because everything references their source of truth - their ERP. Each channel and partner can reference real-time information and customer data to determine whether and when a product can reach them.
The paradigm of fulfillment as a logistics problem, where products move through warehouses and shipping faster, breaks down in an omnichannel ecosystem. The determining factor is less how fast you can ship, and more how well you can coordinate.
Every new sales channel, even if it’s emailed POs, creates a level of complexity for teams to manage. With more success comes more orders, more systems, and more headcount to keep up. Without a unified way to manage how orders move throughout the organization, each new channel introduced risk.
Instead of adopting new channels in tandem for omnichannel diversification, successful sellers are starting with order flow and the system of action behind it. It’s an operational system in which each order, regardless of origin, follows a standardized path from validation to fulfillment.
This principle puts suppliers in the multichannel order fulfillment flow, connecting their systems and inventory to their partners. While retailers own much of the customer relationship, suppliers ultimately determine fulfillment.
Operators are strategically shifting from fragmented tools towards a centralized system of action where the ERP becomes the source of truth using orchestration layers to coordinate the channels, systems, and partners around it, in real-time.
It’s a new approach that’s not about ‘more technology’, but rather rethinking how points in an order ecosystem work together.
For suppliers and retailers to meet consumer demands and compete, they must adopt interoperable systems across the supply chain. Multichannel order fulfillment only succeeds if supplier connectivity is prioritized from the start.
Historically, big box stores have forced their suppliers to adopt their systems, their way of trading, and their standards. To truly adopt multichannel order fulfillment at scale, across their brick-and-mortar store and e-commerce channels, they need to unlock supplier connectivity by leading the new standard of orchestration.
For suppliers, multichannel fulfillment across partners and digital channels requires sales at scale, where the different ways orders enter the business don’t create operational lag. Orchestration layers provide an alternative to iPaaS tools that keep everything in isolation and improve B2B selling, where traditional OMS solely services retail workflows.
The competitive advantage for both parties lies in controlling how orders flow across the entire supply chain, not just multichannel fulfillment.