Order Management System (OMS)

An order management system handles the end-to-end lifecycle of customer orders. It captures orders from sales channels (eCommerce, EDI, wholesale portals, manual entry), validates them against inventory and business rules, routes them to the appropriate fulfillment location, and tracks them through picking, packing, shipping, and delivery. For shippers, the OMS is the system that decides what needs to ship, when, and from where – while the TMS handles how it gets there.

A typical OMS manages order capture and consolidation, inventory availability checks, fulfillment routing (which warehouse or 3PL ships each order), release scheduling, and order status tracking. In more sophisticated setups, the OMS handles split shipments, backorder logic, customer allocation rules, and automated order releases based on delivery windows or production schedules. The data it generates – items, quantities, dimensions, ship-to addresses, required delivery dates – feeds directly into transportation planning.

The handoff between OMS and TMS is one of the most critical data junctions in a shipper's operation. When it's manual – someone exporting orders from one system and importing them into another – it creates lag, errors, and a bottleneck that scales poorly. When the two systems are integrated, orders flow automatically into transportation planning the moment they're released, shipment confirmations flow back, and everyone from logistics to customer service works from the same data. For shippers running multiple sales channels or fulfilling from multiple locations, this integration determines whether the operation runs smoothly or drowns in manual coordination.