Order Management Workflow
The order management process combines all aspects of the platform to provide day to day management of
customer orders. The process is best thought of in three stages:
pre-fulfilment fulfilment post-fulfilment
The stages are summarised below, along with flow diagrams of a typical order lifecycle within the platform.
This encapsulates all activities that occur within the system prior to the order being physically processed. Generally
most of not all of these steps will occur as a result of customer action, and may take place on a third party marketplace,
such as Amazon or Shopify, and will do so in an autonomous fashion, unless eg. the order is taken manually over the phone.
The diagram below breaks down the sequence of events as they relate to the platform:
Customer Order Service Allocations Service Inventory Service Geocoding Service Order finalised Assuming organisation does not use custom allocation service. Allocation will fail if no shipping detail is present on the order. Updated orders are not reallocated automatically, this will need to be done manually. loop A geocode failure will halt allocation and require manual allocation. loop loop loop Order Created 1 Reserve inventory items for the order. 2 Trigger order allocation. 3 Retrieve order details 4 Retrieve inventory item reservations for the order. 5 Bulk lookup inventory items from product variants. 6 Group inventory items & quantities for each shipping detail present in order. 7 Geocode shipping detail address(es). 8 Query for locations & inventory levels nearest to geocoded shipment detail. 9 Return nearest locations and available inventory levels. 10 Validate that available inventory across locations is sufficient to allocate the order. 11 Order locations according to distance and available inventory to determine optimal allocation. 12 Create order allocations at selected locations. 13 Reserve inventory at location on order allocation creation. 14 Update order fulfilment status once order allocated. 15 Customer Order Service Allocations Service Inventory Service Geocoding Service Fulfilment encapsulates all the back-office processes that occur after an order has entered the system.
This involves inventory reservation & allocation, order routing, picking & packing orders and shipment generation
and tracking.
The diagram below explains the interaction amongst services internally for a typical order throughout it's lifecycle within the
platform. Aspects of this workflow are likely to differ depending on your specific use-cases and business processes. More detailed
information on each of the steps can generally be found in the API documentation for the corresponding service.
Picking Station Picking Service Labelling Station Fulfilment Service Peripherals Service Order Service Shipping Service Inventory Service loop Can optionally specify shipment detail ID here, or later on in fulfilment. If not specified earlier, shipping detail ID must be specified here. alt [Picker affixes LPN to package for shipment labelling later.] [Picker prints shipping label] shipment ID/options validated at this stage. loop alt [Picker affixes LPN to package for shipment labelling later.] [Picker prints shipping label] opt [Cloud connected hardware peripherals used] alt [Picker affixes LPN to package for shipment labelling later.] [Picker prints shipping label] alt The expectation is that a batch would be looked up by a tote ID. loop opt [Shipment Manifesting] Staff signs in to begin order picking at a location. Query for existing pick queues. List of existing queues for the location retrieved. Staff may create new queue if different filter conditions required. Staff initialises new picking session for for chosen queue. Retrieve list of peripherals available at the location. Link peripherals to active session. Set peripheral to in use if necessary. Orders pulled as necessary according to queue filter conditions. Client creates new picking batch Client queries for orders due to be picked. Orders for as long as the queue is not empty. Retrieve order details. Begin picking order. Create fulfilment for specified order. Specify shipping options depending on order/peripheral requirements. Update order status to reflect fulfilment in progress. Return item allocation details for order (via picking service endpoint). Send details of items packed and packages created. Update fulfilment with item/package details. Staff marks picking complete for order. Staff sends packages with LPN to different station for labelling. Fulfilment details retrieved by LPN. Staff marks picking complete for order. Fulfilment is finalised. Allocation marked as completed, inventory permanently decreased. retrieve address details for shipment detail ID. Shipment label requested for fulfilment. generate shipment label with logistics provider. Attach generated shipment label details to fulfilment. Update order with shipment details. Notify shipping label generated Notify shipping label generated Send shipping label, documents, etc. to peripherals. Peripheral prints physical documents. Picker staff affixes label(s) to package(s). Labelling staff affixes label(s) to package(s). Picking batch closed either manually or automatically. Request manifest for a picking batch. Request manifest for a picking batch Create shipment batch for all shipments created within picking batch. Return created batch details. retrieve and print manifest documents. Picking Station Picking Service Labelling Station Fulfilment Service Peripherals Service Order Service Shipping Service Inventory Service Post fulfilment encapsulates all activities that occur after a package has been dispatched. This typically includes activities such as:
Manifesting (though this could fall under the fulfilment section in some cases)
Shipment tracking
Post-processing workflows (eg. sending order dispatch confirmation emails)
There are many other processes not listed that fall within this section, with most being specific to any given business and their
set of operations.