In IBM Sterling OMS, Exception Handling is the procedure for managing deviations from the normal order processing flow – including incorrect pricing, missing information, inventory issues, stock shortages, payment issues, or shipping errors – which require immediate attention to preserve service quality and operational continuity. Retail businesses manage order processing and exception handling through manual entries and semi-automated systems. These tasks are typically divided among customer service teams, logistics staff, and operations managers, who rely heavily on traditional tools like spreadsheets and email communications.
The Strategic Impact of Automation
Order Exception handling procedures are crucial to maintaining competitive advantage and customer satisfaction. This traditional approach affects workload. A report suggests that employees spend around 30% of their time managing email alone, which involves communications related to order and exception management. In addition to being time-consuming, these manual processes are prone to errors that can affect your bottom line and customer satisfaction. With rising consumer expectations for quick service and flawless execution, automating these processes has become a strategic priority. Automation can transform every aspect of exception handling by improving efficiency and precision.
In IBM OMS, we have a reprocessing flag which makes the exception re-processible. And there is not out of the box automation process.
Automatic exception handling can be done in various ways in OMS including the following.
- Writing a utility: We can write a utility to query all the alerts and exceptions and have all the possible solution for each exception. For example, getting cache issue because of multi thread while creating the order. In this case, simple reprocess will work. So, we need to specify the Error code inside utility to reprocess this exception.
In Utility, we must call the OMS rest API to get the exception and its details and then identify the solution and based on that reprocess as it is or modify the xml and reprocess.
Some time we must modify the input xml to fix the issues and reprocess with modified xml.
- Pros: This is the better automatic exception resolution in SAS environment. We are not allowed to query directly to database.
- For any changes to utility, we do not need a build.
- Cons: we need a separate environment to run this utility.
- Writing an agent servers: We process the exception within the OMS. In this case we create an agent server in OMS. We will have to specify error codes and what to do for what error, fix the exception and reprocess or just reprocess depending upon the error code.
- Pros: This does not require a separate environment to run this utility, we can create OMS agent server to use this.
- Cons: This will be tied to the project workspace and if we need to change any code, it must be done using the build process.
- Utility with database query: This can only be done in on-perm, Sas environment does not support the querying database directly. In this case we get directly query the database to get the exceptions and then reprocess or fix and reprocess depending upon specify error codes the exception using API.
- Pros: This is an easy and quick utility where you just write the database query and reprocess.
- Cons: we need a separate environment to run this utility
- Reprocess when you get the exception – This automatic resolving exception has limitation as if it is not handled properly, it can cause the server to crash or not process the actual message. And since the risk of the implementation is too high, it is highly recommended to minimize this implementation or do it properly so that it never gets stuck in a loop.
- Pros: This does not require any overhead or utility to reprocess the exception.
- Cons: This can only be done for certain exception which we know can be fixed by reprocess
Advantages of Automation
- Operational cost reductions from minimizing manual labor and streamlining processes. Automation can cut operational expenses related to order processing by up to 40% by reducing the need for manual labor and decreasing the incidence of errors.
- Accuracy enhancements and lower error rates in order processing.
- Automated systems are highly scalable, allowing businesses to handle increased order volumes without proportionate staffing or manual workload increases.
Automation significantly improves customer satisfaction and loyalty by ensuring accurate, timely order processing and proactive exception handling. Automation not only brings substantial cost savings and operational efficiencies, but it also enhances the overall customer experience, paving the way for sustained business growth and success. Automation can be a valuable tool in managing order exceptions. By automating the process, we can reduce the risk of human error and ensure that exceptions are handled consistently. These benefits are not just specific to IBM Sterling OMS, but any OMS system can have these benefits by automating the processing of exceptions.
