The most recent Forrester Wave™: Order Management Systems, Q1 2025 highlighted the evolution of a market that’s reinventing itself as we speak. Our new report, “Lessons Learned From The Forrester Wave™: Order Management Systems, Q1 2025” identifies notable lessons from the evaluation, feedback from customer references, and generative AI (genAI) use cases in OMS.
Here are our three biggest takeaways from the OMS Wave:
Vendor complacency leaves them open to replacement. Most reference customers whom we interviewed didn’t champion their vendor partner, yet we don’t expect many digital businesses to seek a full OMS replacement in the near future. Still, OMS vendors cannot stay complacent and must tackle rifts. Customer complaints we heard included poor communication and unfulfilled promises that vendors made during the sales cycle.
GenAI use cases focus on the business user. Our evaluation also reviewed piloted and recently launched genAI initiatives from OMS vendors. Many of these genAI features center on tools to improve the experiences in the OMS user interface (UI). Vendors leverage genAI particularly for workflow automation, order orchestration, and summarization features in the UI. Less commonly, chatbot assistant features help clients with merchandising and analytics.
Businesses realize “the way they’ve done it for years” isn’t enough anymore. To solve their business needs, business leaders must identify the key functions that are missing from their commerce tech ecosystem. The required core functions for OMS don’t change (e.g., order orchestration, inventory visibility, customer service, and store fulfillment tools in OMS). But the market’s expectations do change, so an OMS that doesn’t provide near real-time inventory availability just won’t cut it anymore. Zooming in on the functionality rather than the software can help businesses identify whether replacing a platform (perhaps slowly) is the right choice for them.
For further insights, read our latest report. Want to talk more about your own order management or commerce solution needs? Let’s catch up — Forrester clients, please book a guidance session or inquiry with me!
