Your Options in Order Management Systems

Other catalogers have adapted enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, including large-scale systems (e.g., SAP or Oracle’s business suite), to their order-management requirements. Still other catalogers, not finding a packaged solution they can live with, have written their own systems.

Taken together, such alternatives most likely account for 15 percent to 20 percent of all catalog companies. And as disparate as catalogers are, they have one thing in common: They’re not using one of the three dozen catalog management software (CMS) applications, i.e., systems specifically designed for managing a catalog company. (Actually, users of packaged systems in this miscellaneous category most often aren’t even aware of CMS alternatives.)