A supply chain is often thought of as a logistical mechanism focused exclusively on moving goods, from manufacturers through assorted intermediaries to retailers. As well as very ‘wide’, a supply chain may also be very ‘deep’, especially if the final product is complex. For example, recent discussions around tariffs in North America have revealed how automotive parts might cross international borders multiple times, between different organisations, in the course of building a complete vehicle for an end customer.
Retailing, meanwhile, is generally perceived as a distinct discipline focused exclusively on enabling the last leg of a product’s journey, to the final customer; it’s the process of generating consumer interaction and selling products.
But modern developments – and particularly expectations around customer experience – have surely blurred these lines significantly. It’s time for a more singular view – a unified perspective – in which supply chain management is viewed as a consumer-centric activity, stemming directly from, even led by, the consumer experience.
Modern consumers, in both B2C and B2B environments, are increasingly influenced by personalized, seamless and rapid experiences – as pioneered by dominant ecommerce platforms such as Amazon or Alibaba. These platforms elevated (and continue to elevate) consumer expectations, notably around speed, transparency, customization, reliability, convenience and trust. Consumers have quickly come to expect, as standard, experiences that include comprehensive visibility into order status, immediate responses to queries, and precise delivery timing.
This level of information compels retailers (in the wide sense of the term) to view the supply chain not merely as a logistical function but as an integral extension of the retail experience itself – exposing very clearly the intrinsic interconnection between retailing and the supply chain behind any purchase. This diminishes the distinction between the back-end logistics and front-end consumer-facing operations, requiring businesses to optimize their supply chains with the explicit aim of directly enhancing their retail performance.
The consumer experience (including factors such as speed of delivery, product availability, and responsiveness to customer preferences) is heavily dependent upon supply chain efficiency. Yet a company must strategically manage and control costs across its entire supply chain if it’s to deliver high-quality consumer experiences sustainably. Cost management directly influences competitiveness, pricing, profitability, and consumer satisfaction. Therefore, effective cost control is critical – not merely as an internal efficiency measure, but as a strategic lever directly impacting a customer's eventual retail experience.
But a supply chain designed with the consumer experience in mind needs meaningful agility and flexibility. With this objective in mind, a retailer’s first priority must be to construct a genuinely responsive supply chain capable of adapting swiftly to fluctuations in consumer demand, operational disruptions, market shifts and even geopolitical changes – effectively, a resilient supply chain. This responsiveness directly improves customer satisfaction by reducing delays, mitigating stock-outs, and ensuring availability of popular items.
It's also worth mentioning that such agility is now essential for maintaining competitive advantage in both B2C and B2B environments. Everyone working in a B2B environment is, outside of their working life, a consumer. And, in all probability, they are a consumer who is used to B2C levels of consumer experience (seamless, omnichannel, etc.) and sees no reason why they shouldn’t expect the same speed, transparency, and control in respect of their B2B procurement processes.
Such agility requires real-time data and analytics; only these two ingredients can adequately facilitate quick decision-making processes and allow rapid adjustments to inventory, production scheduling and logistics operations. And the critical tool supporting this unified vision of retailing and supply chain management is the Order Management System (OMS).
A high-performance OMS isn’t simply a solution for tracking, processing and managing orders across supply chains. An OMS is, actually, more akin to a central nervous system which – yes – links manufacturing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing and the final consumer experience. Modern OMS platforms enable businesses to track and manage orders across every stage of the supply chain in real-time, improving data accuracy, enhancing visibility, increasing resilience and ensuring a consistent consumer experience.
For manufacturers, an OMS supports inventory management and production scheduling, enabling accurate forecasting based on actual consumer demand. It can provide precise insights into which products are actually selling, how quickly they are selling and through which channels, informing production strategies and reducing waste.
Distributors and wholesalers, meanwhile, are advantaged by an OMS in the form of enhanced inventory visibility, better (more accurate) demand forecasting and streamlined logistics operations. These advantages result in the benefit of quicker and more efficient movement of goods through the supply chain.
And, of course, retailers – wholly online, wholly offline, and every combination in between – derive enormous value from an OMS: think improved consumer experiences, real-time inventory visibility, precise delivery windows, seamless returns processes… Read more about these benefits in our posts about maintaining good OTIF rates in peak seasons, how to drive down food waste and five reasons to adopt an OMS.
Redefining the supply chain as being fundamentally consumer-driven rather than purely logistics-driven is essential because, thanks largely to modern consumer expectations, the retail and supply chain functions are inherently interlinked. Doing so enables companies to better meet the contemporary challenges of optimizing consumer experiences, controlling costs effectively – and to sustain competitive advantages in markets that are apt to change frequently, quickly and unpredictably.
An OMS is central to enabling this shift, providing the visibility, flexibility, and responsiveness required across manufacturing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, and customer interactions. Read more about Kbrw’s OMS here.