Unlocking AI for Your Retail Business With Order Orchestration

Ashley Hartwell and Mustafa Masud, Directors of Product Management at fabric, on how to unlock AI for your retail business with order orchestration

AI isn’t just another trend; it’s a transformative technology with near-universal appeal due to its extensive impact. In fact, 92% of businesses plan to invest in AI-powered software this year and the number of AI products released in 2023 doubled that of prior years, according to Gartner.

Retailers are no different in their eagerness for AI, and fabric’s customers are particularly excited about deploying AI-powered solutions to solve some of their most critical pain points. Through continuous engagement with our customers, we’ve learned that order orchestration enhanced by AI and rich product data is where they see the most potential for transformation.

In this article, you’ll learn how fabric is revolutionizing retail operations with our AI-powered Order Orchestration, which combines intelligent order management with rich product catalog capabilities to create a unified commerce experience.

Order management challenges disrupt retail performance

Retailers face major demand and fulfillment challenges like financial strain due to excess stock, inefficiencies caused by inaccurate tracking, and stockouts from inaccurate or missing product information. These issues lead to missed sales and operational disruptions, directly impacting revenue and profits.

Moreover, these issues create bigger challenges for retailers, such as:

  1. Customer dissatisfaction: Delays, stockouts, and inadequate or inaccurate product information frustrate customers, resulting in lost sales and weakened brand loyalty.
  2. Operational inefficiency: Inaccurate tracking and manual errors lead to stockouts or overstock, disrupting business operations and increasing costs.
  3. Commerce channel challenges: Poor SEO, site search performance, and shopping feed data impede product discovery, lower conversation rates, and increase order returns.

For retailers, fabric Order Orchestration is the solution. With fabric’s reimagined OMS powered by AI and enhanced with fabric’s product catalog capabilities, it’s ready to make your product data even richer. And, because of fabric’s modular approach, we can quickly put innovations like this in the hands of retailers.

Revolutionizing commerce with AI-powered Order Orchestration

The commerce landscape is experiencing a fundamental shift. While retailers have historically struggled with disconnected systems for order management and product information, fabric has taken a new approach with an AI-powered Order Orchestration solution that brings these capabilities together in a unified solution.

At the heart of our platform is an intelligent AI assistant that works alongside your team to enhance operations across:

  • Real-time inventory optimization
  • Product information enrichment and distribution
  • Order management and fulfillment
  • Channel management and expansion

At fabric, we’re giving merchandisers a new way to launch and scale their sales channels. Instead of spending months setting up new social commerce integrations, retailers can now deploy in days while maintaining consistent product content across all platforms. This rapid deployment is powered by intelligent workflows that allow small teams to efficiently manage complex operations like optimizing product content, allocating inventory, optimizing fulfillment, and more. Across teams and stakeholders, fabric resolves the collaboration, coordination, integration, and other bottlenecks that have historically slowed channel expansion.

The impact on fulfillment operations is equally powerful. Our advanced OMS now provides real-time order velocity monitoring that prevents stockouts before they occur, while smart exception management catches potential issues before they disappoint customers. By dynamically optimizing fulfillment capacity based on real-time data, retailers can efficiently allocate resources to meet fluctuating demand without overextending their operations.

Perhaps most significantly, fabric OMS drives substantial improvements in customer lifetime value. By displaying real-time product availability directly on PDPs, cart abandonment is reduced while delivery expectations are set accurately. Combined with easier order tracking and consistent and accurate product information across all touchpoints, customers get a seamless shopping experience that keeps them coming back. The result is a virtuous cycle where operational excellence directly translates into customer loyalty. 

Your AI assistant for retail excellence

fabric’s AI assistant acts as a powerful guide for your team, providing:

  • Intelligent insights and recommendations: The assistant continuously analyzes your operations, providing actionable insights and suggesting optimization opportunities for both order fulfillment and product content.
  • Automated task execution: From automatically enriching product descriptions to optimizing fulfillment routes, the AI assistant handles routine tasks while flagging exceptions that need human attention.
  • Predictive analytics: By analyzing historical data and current trends, the assistant helps predict demand patterns, potential stockouts, and fulfillment bottlenecks before they impact your business.
  • Natural language interfaces: Team members can interact with the assistant using natural language to query data, generate insightful metrics, and receive guidance on complex decisions.

Using AI to enhance order orchestration

fabric Order Orchestration gives you an AI-powered solution that scales seamlessly across omnichannel operations. It allows for easier and more effective discovery of products optimized for SEO, to drive conversion, together with real-time monitoring, smart exception alerts, and dynamic capacity optimization to ensure efficient, flexible fulfillment. fabric Order Orchestration helps retailers streamline operations and boost customer satisfaction.

By reimagining OMS, fabric combines the power of AI with deep order management and product catalog capabilities:

  • Enhanced demand generation: Retailers can improve omnichannel shopping experiences with AI-enriched product information connected to real-time inventory to enhance product discovery, SEO, and site search, and increase conversion. Moreover, automated categorization mapping assigns newly imported or created products to the appropriate category.
  • Intelligent fulfillment optimization: With smart order fulfillment, fabric automatically evaluates inventory levels, carrier capacity, and delivery promises across locations to eliminate manual tradeoffs between speed and cost. With analytics-driven insights, AI recommends new fulfillment rules and automates decisions, helping retailers meet service levels while reducing shipping costs and split shipments. This approach ensures that orders are fulfilled from the most optimal location, streamlining operations and enhancing the customer experience. 
  • Seamless channel management: Retailers can capture revenue faster by launching and iterating channels in days versus months to increase conversion through consistent and rich product content. Small teams can scale efficiently using intelligent workflows, minimize poor customer experiences from overselling and cancellations with real-time inventory, and reduce PDP abandonment with real-time availability and product content.
  • D2C excellence: Reducing reliance on marketplaces and third parties increases margins. AI-powered OMS helps retailers quickly test and scale new markets, and then improve customer lifetime value with better shopping experiences from rich product descriptions and intelligent inventory allocations. Retailers can also enable reliable and faster fulfillment and free up working capital with optimized inventory availability.

Where AI meets seamless commerce

What makes fabric’s approach unique is how we’ve integrated these capabilities into a single platform, enhanced by AI. Instead of managing multiple systems and struggling with data synchronization, retailers get:

  • A unified view of orders, inventory, and product information.
  • Consistent product content across all channels.
  • Real-time inventory visibility on product pages.
  • Automated content enrichment and optimization.
  • Intelligent fulfillment decisions based on complete data.

Take the next step in your AI journey with fabric

The adoption of AI in retail is accelerating as more use cases emerge and the potential value becomes clear. With fabric’s reimagined Order Orchestration, we’re helping retailers harness AI’s power through an integrated solution that combines intelligent order management with rich product content capabilities. By listening to our customers and continuously evolving our AI assistant, we’re creating the future of retail operations today.

See how fabric can transform your retail business with AI-powered Order Orchestration. 


Topics: Product
Ashley Hartwell

Director of Product Management @ fabric. Former Senior Product Manager @ Amazon and Baylor Scott & White Health.

Learn more about fabric