Guest article by Dan Calamai, Managing Partner, Sangora

Years have passed since the debut of your Order Management System (OMS). Periodic meetings with the OMS provider to address support issues and advocating for new features have become routine. As the need arises, new users join the system, and your product offerings have expanded to fulfill pivotal RFPs. There might even be a team member tasked with making occasional updates to the system.

Yet over time, the truth becomes inescapable: your OMS has fallen behind your business needs and is in need of optimization. In our fast-moving industry, a laid-back maintenance strategy simply won’t cut it. To tap into the latent potential of your OMS, a concerted and strategic approach is essential.

Worry not! This guide is your roadmap to unlocking the full potential of your OMS, ensuring you’re able to unleash the efficiencies hidden beneath the surface. 

Ask Around 

The first step in OMS optimization is to gather vital feedback that will help steer the project. First, meet with the management or executive team and ask them:

  • What do you wish we could be doing in the OMS that we aren’t today?
  • What’s working well? What can’t you live without?
  • What OMS pain points has your team bubbled up to you?
  • Have you seen things at prior companies you’ve worked at that might be useful in our setup?

Second, talk with people that use the system every day across a variety of teams. I recommend one person from each core team across a mix of the “super users” that know the system inside and out and other users who struggle with the system. This mix will greatly increase the variety of feedback. Ask them a few questions:

  • What’s working well? What can’t you live without?
  • What are the biggest pain points? 
  • What things are still happening outside the OMS because of too much friction? 
  • Have you seen things at prior companies you’ve worked at that might be useful in our setup?
  • Are there team members who struggle with knowledge who could use refresher training?

And lastly, set up time with your OMS Customer Success Manager (CSM). You might already meet with them on a regular cadence, but this meeting will be focused on specific topics that they’ll need to prepare for:

  • What new features have been released since our implementation that might be useful to our business? 
  • What themes exist amongst our Customer Support tickets that could warrant additional training or updated configuration? 

Review Integrations

Integrations with other business systems (e.g. CRM, ad servers, financial systems, analytics, avails) are a key selling point of any Order Management System. Reviewing their setup, while also investigating new potential integrations, is an important facet of the optimization process. 

Most OMSs have integration logs that track all interactions between other systems and are accessible to admins. If not, ask your CSM for an export of all integration activity over the past 6 months. Review failures across each of the integrated systems. Are there themes to the errors? Why are they happening? Is there a configuration setting that could easily resolve the errors? You may need to loop in the OMS support team to investigate some of the failures but the 80/20 rule suggests that there are a few tweaks that could bring large gains. 

Are the correct data points being synced between the OMS and each integrated system? It’s likely that the business needs have shifted since the system was first integrated, which means that new data points could be useful to either pull into the OMS or push outwards. 

Moreover, is data syncing at the right time between each system? For example, if your OMS is integrated with Salesforce, are the Opportunities syncing to your OMS at the correct stage? This tweak could be a quick win for both your sales and planning teams. 

Are there any other systems that are supported out-of-the box that are not currently integrated? Make a list of all systems that interact manually with the OMS (basically, anything you have to manually key or load OMS data). Are there out-of-the-box integration capabilities that are not being leveraged? For example, you might be using a new video ad server that is currently being trafficked manually. Leveraging a pre-built integration between the OMS and this ad server could be a huge win for your ops team. 

If there are no out-of-the-box integrations that can be leveraged, are there any connections that are so important that a custom integration might be worthwhile? It’s no small task to build a custom integration between your OMS and another system but they are worth evaluating from time to time. Most ad tech platforms have made a push to open APIs in the past few years which opens up new integration possibilities. Before building an integration yourself, talk to your OMS vendor to see if it’s on their roadmap or if they’re willing to partner with you to build. If they have other customers that have been clamoring for the same integration, they might be willing to partially or fully subsidize the costs. 

Analyze Products & Packages

Products and packages are the lifeblood of the OMS and impact nearly every other part of the system. They deserve a detailed look during the optimization process. 

First, clean up outdated or unused products and packages from the catalog. It’s frustrating for sellers to sift through outdated products and keeping it clean sends the message that you value their time. I recommend running a line item report from closed/won deals over the past X months. Twelve months is a good starting point but the timeframe can vary depending on the cyclical nature of your business. Flag any products and packages that had less than $1,000 of revenue tied to them during the period. Review these products with the business to see if they should be kept or can be deactivated. 

With the same line item report, identify common sales trends within your media plans. Are the same products frequently sold together? If so, it’s a potential opportunity to create predefined packages for planners to leverage in future deals. This analysis can save critical time during the planning process. 

Run an admin level product report to analyze the entire product catalog. Are there any duplicates? Many companies lack a formal product creation process which leads to duplicate products over time. This optimization project is a great time to clean up any dupes. 

Finally, examine the product naming conventions within the same administrative report. For the same reason why duplicates exist, product names lose consistency over time which causes confusion amongst the OMS end users. Address and resolve any inconsistencies to ensure uniformity throughout the catalog.

Other Potential Optimizations

A few other product areas worth reviewing for optimization possibilities:

  • Cost Methods – does every product have the correct cost method (e.g. CPM, CPC, Flat) assigned? 
  • Rates – rates change at least yearly but are not always updated in the OMS. 
  • Targeting – Ensure that each product has the appropriate targets assigned. Incomplete target assignments for products can result in increased manual labor for your Operations team. Conversely, assigning an excessive number of targets to products may lead to situations where client expectations are not met due to overcommitment.

User Deep Dive

Most OMS contracts designate a minimum number of users you’re billed for each month. I’ve seen scenarios where companies are being overcharged because they aren’t using their minimum number of users or there are unneeded users in the system. This is a great opportunity to analyze your current contractual user count vs. usage to see if there are any red flags. When digging into your active user list, check the last login date to confirm that they’re actually using the system. If it’s been a while since the last login, talk to the person to see if they still need system access. If not, deactivate them. At the end of this exercise, compare the total number of active users to your contractual minimum. 

If your active user count is significantly below your minimum, it’s an opportunity to negotiate with your CSM to potentially lower your minimums. Conversely, if your active user count is higher than the minimum, you might be able to lower the monthly user cost since your usage is so much higher than originally anticipated. Either way, you’re saving money. 

Also on the user front, take a look at your teaming setup. Sales teams change frequently but they’re not always updated in the OMS. Additionally, you may have gone live without any teaming functionality but the business has since decided to utilize a more formal teaming structure.

Last on the user front is Single Sign On (SSO). SSO is one of the most common features to be delayed to “phase 2” during an OMS implementation. Unfortunately, the realities of the media business often kicks the phase 2 can indefinitely down the road. If your company uses SSO, this is a good time to reevaluate if you want to leverage it in your OMS. 

Accounts and Contacts Cleanup

Your OMS accounts and contacts are likely duplicative, out-of-date, and have incorrect owners (or some combination of all three). This problem can be difficult to tackle and is one of the most common pitfalls of an evolving sales organization (so don’t feel bad!).  

Solving all of these problems is a sizable project in itself but this OMS optimization is a good time to address the low-hanging fruit. Talk to a few sellers and planners to get a quick temperature check of the biggest issues with the business’s accounts and contacts. Find a theme and tackle it. 

If it’s a duplication issue, there are Salesforce plugins that let you quickly clean them up (and if you’re not a Salesforce user, you can rely on a bit of Excel formula magic). If the data is out-of-date, run reports and filter by last modified date to identify potential records to deactivate. If it’s incorrect owners, work with a sales leader to help reassign. In all of these instances, I recommend sharing a list of potential changes with the key stakeholders for their approval and feedback before making any system updates. 

Approval Rules Alignment

OMS approval rules are the systemization of your business processes and workflow. As your business changes, so should your approval rules. It’s difficult to perfectly implement approval rules during an initial OMS implementation and it’s a feature that requires constant attention. If they’re too strict, deals will be held up in unnecessary check points. If they’re too relaxed, deals could flow through to operations without the proper oversight. 

Look through each individual approval rule and ask “does this still serve a purpose?” You may need to discuss with a few team leaders to confirm. If not, deactivate it and move on (it’s easy to reactivate later on if need be). 

Are there any new business processes or data checks that need to be built into new approval rules? If so, build them and gather feedback. 

Wrapping Up

As you work through the OMS optimization, it’s crucial to keep everyone informed about potential changes. Proactive communication ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page and understand the significance of the OMS in driving future business success.

Every tweak, every update, every bit of feedback you act on is like a power-up for your business. Each step taken is an investment into the future of your business, ensuring that the OMS remains a robust tool in your organization’s growth.

Efficiencies unleashed!

Dan Calamai is the Managing Partner at Sangora, a consultancy that helps media & ad tech companies improve their operations by designing and implementing technology and workflow. If you’d like to learn more about optimizing your OMS (or just to say hi), reach out at dan@sangora.co.