Pre-customized Distributed Order Management Solution for Retailers
A few months back I started off on the solution definition for a Distributed Order Management solution. We are implementing a pre-built retail solution on top of SterlingCommerce's Multi-Channel Fulfillment product. We have done quite a few OMS implementations for leading retailers and figured that for years we have built very similar custom functionality on top of the base product. o we built these customizations one more time and packaged it into a solution.
We found that the impact of having pre-built components is both subtle and immediate. Its subtle in the sense that it drives a tremendous sense of confidence in my design team since its the wind behind our backs. We know we have all this stuff ready to go. It is immediate since it packages organizational knowledge and presents it to the team and to the client.
For instance, we identified 70 odd interfaces that we do at nearly all our OMS implementations. We packaged these into a system interaction diagram as part of our solution.
On day 2 of our engagement I presented it to the client team.
After some silence, one of them said, "Those are our interfaces". It felt nice.
In addition to the interfaces, we have the integration maps defined upfront. We have defined all the fields that the solution needed to function. This acts as a catalyst for the client's integration teams since they can start evaluating the impact of the solution on their other systems on Day 1.
Obviously, there may be changes that are necessitated by the specific requirements of the client. However, within the same industry vertical it's unlikely that there will be huge gaps.
Our DOM Solution is more than just the customizations. It contains all our implementation accelerators, design documents and design and development tools.
Watch out for more details on our solution.
