How to Build a Business Case for Order Management

Protecting productivity, profitability and customer promise as retail complexity increases

OMS investment is a business decision, not just a technology upgrade. Building a credible case requires more than operational frustration,— it requires numbers, alignment across functions and a clear picture of what the cost of inaction actually is. This guide shows retail, brand and commerce leaders how to quantify the operational and financial impact of growing complexity, and how to build a case for investment that holds up to scrutiny from Finance, IT and the board.

What you will learn

With this guide, you will be able to:

1. Recognise the warning signs that your current systems have been outgrown — and when that tipping point typically occurs
2. Quantify the financial impact of manual coordination, split shipments, returns inefficiency and missed delivery promises
3. Understand where OMS ROI typically comes from across revenue protection, cost-to-serve and productivity
4. Align Ecommerce, Operations, IT and Finance around a shared business case, not competing departmental arguments
5. Present a credible investment case to your CFO or board, grounded in your operation’s specific numbers

Why it matters today

Retail and brand operating models are becoming structurally more complex. Fulfilment and last-mile costs can represent 10–20% of revenue in ecommerce-heavy operations. Returns can erode 20–30% of margin in some fashion categories. Meanwhile, customer tolerance for delivery failure continues to decline and reliability is now a competitive differentiator.

Many organisations already have systems in place. The question is whether those systems are designed for the scale and complexity they now operate. Manual coordination, fragmented integrations and legacy routing logic quietly erode productivity and margin — not through a single failure but cumulatively across missed sales, split shipments, labour effort and exception management.

Adoption is not maturity. The real business question is whether order management capability is delivering enough, today and for the next stage of growth.

This guide is produced by Hardis Supply Chain. As an OMS software provider with over 20 years of experience in Benelux retail, Hardis supports organisations in building, justifying and successfully delivering their order management investments.