Originate the Orders

Originate might not be right term here. I used the term to indicate the start of a process, but I believe that a better term would be aggregate the orders. OrderCore itself is not a marketing tool, but a business tool to collect and fulfill orders and make the process around it efficient aimed at optimally serving the customer.


There are basically four ways to originate orders into OrderCore: manually entered, imported, integrated with the E-commerce website and specific shopping cart integrations.

The imported orders are the most interesting as they likely come from multiple channels. An API integration is an option for some channels (like with Amazon.com), sometimes even required (like with Drugstore.com) in the event they outsource to an external fulfillment channel.

Once the orders are imported or integrated the fulfillment process can start and the next topic will be 'fulfill the orders'.

The first step

The first step in this new journey is to publish a book that described the concepts of multi-channel order management in a broader business perspective and off course with using the OrderCore software.

In the Internet age aspiring writers can now reach an audience much easier by self publising. I used Lulu for this process and it is interesting how they engage you in the process. It was 15 years ago when I published my first book. At that time we didn't have the option of self publishing through the Internet yet, but I appeared to be lucky as the second publisher I send my manuscript to showed interest and followed through with it. Hence, I had my book in the book stores and checked regularly if anyone was actually buying it. It was a text book about taxation and didn't become a best seller, but the process itself was fascinating. This was a much different experience and had a total different purpose. I did not 'publish to sell', but 'publish to promote', so now I have to wait and see how well it does with the search engines. The title is Managing Multi-Channel Orders with OrderCore; Enabling a Customer Focus in Order Fulfillment; ISBN 978-0-557-03968-5.

Soon, I will make the first introduction chapter available for download and will start discussing each chapter in separate blog posts. Besides the introduction chapter here are the main chapters:

• Originate the Orders


• Fulfill the Orders


• Service the Customers


• Balance the Cash Flow


• Sense the Purchasing


• Manage the Inventory


• Analyze the Financials


• Monitor the Performance


• Maintain the Catalog


• Energize the Marketing


• Ease the Data Exchange

The book is more than only about order fulfillment, but about how the other functions contribute to efficient operations with a customer focus as the core.

The start of a new journey

It has been a long road to get to the first commercial release of OrderCore. We starting using the first version of OrderCore in February 2006. Back then we could only manage order status and keep track of them. Almost three years later we have a full multi-channel order management solution available with multi-currency support, multi-company operations and multi-lingual customer communication. Four times multi should lead to tremendous opportunities.


The purpose of this blog is to keep everyone up-to-date in our progress to get the product to the market and to build an information tool around everything going on the world of multi-channel order management.