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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Order Management Planner

💰 $55,000 - $85,000

Supply ChainOperationsOrder Management

🎯 Role Definition

The Order Management Planner is responsible for managing the end-to-end order lifecycle to ensure on-time, accurate order fulfillment while minimizing inventory risk and delivering outstanding customer service. This role coordinates across sales, production, procurement, logistics, and finance to execute order processing, allocation, scheduling, shipment confirmation, exception management, and continuous process improvements in the order-to-cash process.

Primary keywords: order management planner, order-to-cash, order fulfillment, inventory allocation, ERP order processing, OTIF, demand alignment, logistics coordination, customer order lifecycle.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Order Coordinator / Order Processor
  • Customer Service Representative (with order handling experience)
  • Inventory Analyst or Supply Chain Assistant

Advancement To:

  • Senior Order Management Planner / Lead Planner
  • Supply Chain Planner / Demand Planner
  • Order to Cash Manager / Operations Manager
  • Logistics or Distribution Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Inventory Control Analyst
  • Logistics Coordinator
  • Procurement Analyst
  • Customer Success or Account Operations Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Manage the full order lifecycle from receipt to delivery by validating customer orders, confirming availability, applying correct pricing and terms, and ensuring proper routing within the ERP system to achieve on-time fulfillment and accurate billing.
  • Allocate inventory to orders based on SKU priorities, safety stock policies, demand forecasts and production schedules, and document allocation decisions to minimize backorders and expedite high-priority shipments.
  • Create, review and release daily/weekly order schedules to production and warehouse teams, coordinating with capacity planners to align manufacturing runs and ensuring critical orders are prioritized according to customer SLAs.
  • Act as the primary point of contact for order exceptions and escalations—investigate causes of late/partial shipments, coordinate corrective actions with suppliers, production, and logistics, and communicate status updates to sales and customers until resolution.
  • Process complex sales orders in the ERP (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite or equivalent), including configuration items, multi-line shipments, drop-ship orders, special pricing, and contract terms while ensuring accurate master-data references and billing triggers.
  • Monitor order-to-cash KPIs (OTIF, fill rate, cycle time, days sales outstanding) and prepare regular performance reports for leadership, recommending corrective actions when KPIs are off-target.
  • Reconcile and clear order backlog and backorders by performing root cause analysis, adjusting demand/supply plans, and coordinating expedited shipping or partial shipments to mitigate customer impact.
  • Coordinate with logistics and carriers to schedule pickups, secure capacity for peak periods, confirm shipment details (INCOTERMS, customs documentation) and ensure on-time carrier handoffs and accurate tracking updates to customers.
  • Validate and process order changes, cancellations, returns (RMA), credits and warranty claims in line with commercial agreements and company policy, capturing reasons and recommending process improvements to reduce future disturbance.
  • Collaborate with Sales and Account Management to confirm order requirements, delivery windows, and special instructions, providing proactive notifications of stock constraints, lead-time changes, and delivery alternatives.
  • Build and maintain strong cross-functional relationships with Procurement and Suppliers to expedite critical components, secure alternative sources, and support production recovery plans when shortages jeopardize confirmed customer deliveries.
  • Support S&OP and demand planning by feeding daily/weekly order signals into forecasts, updating demand exceptions, and participating in planning meetings to ensure orders are aligned with production and inventory strategies.
  • Execute system master data maintenance related to customers, shipping locations, order types, pricing and lead times to reduce order processing errors and accelerate throughput.
  • Drive continuous process improvements and SOP development for order management workflows—documenting best practices, implementing automation opportunities (EDI, API integrations) and reducing manual touches to improve throughput and accuracy.
  • Conduct periodic audits of orders, shipments and billing records to ensure compliance with internal controls, contract terms and external regulations (customs, export control), and support external/internal audit requests.
  • Prepare and present weekly/monthly order status summaries and executive dashboards to highlight trends, risk areas, root causes, and action plans to improve OTIF and reduce order lead time variability.
  • Use data analysis (Excel, SQL, BI tools) to identify recurring order issues, quantify service-level impacts, model what-if scenarios for allocation decisions, and propose inventory or schedule changes that reduce customer disruptions.
  • Train and mentor junior order management staff on processes, systems and escalation protocols to increase team capacity and ensure consistent handling of complex orders.
  • Manage seasonal spikes and special projects—coordinate holiday, promotional or product launch order strategies, including temporary staffing plans, expedited freight approvals and warehouse prioritization.
  • Participate in ERP configuration, testing, and rollout activities for order and fulfillment modules—design test cases, support UAT, create training materials, and validate go-live order flows.
  • Maintain accurate records of customer agreements, SLAs, lead times and preferred carriers so that order handling aligns with contractual obligations and improves customer satisfaction.
  • Coordinate with Finance to resolve invoicing discrepancies, credit memos and order-related billing issues to speed cash application and reduce DSO impacts.
  • Drive root cause elimination by facilitating cross-functional corrective action plans for chronic order failures (data quality, lead time variance, forecasting errors) and track closure of action items to completion.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist in the design and testing of EDI and API order integrations between customers and the ERP to reduce manual order entry and improve data accuracy.
  • Prepare documentation and training materials for updated order processes, system changes, and new integrations to ensure smooth adoption by operations and commercial teams.
  • Support continuous improvement initiatives such as Lean, Six Sigma or Kaizen events focused on order-to-shipment lead-time reduction and defect elimination.
  • Help maintain and improve order management dashboards (Power BI, Tableau) to provide near real-time visibility to cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Aid in dispute resolution with customers by collecting shipping evidence, coordinating root-cause analysis and documenting corrective actions to prevent recurrence.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proficient in ERP order management modules (SAP SD, Oracle Order Management, NetSuite or equivalent) with hands-on experience creating, modifying and closing sales orders.
  • Strong Excel skills including advanced formulas, pivot tables, data cleansing, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH and macros to analyze order data and create actionable reports.
  • Experience with order management systems (OMS), warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS) to coordinate fulfillment and logistics.
  • Familiarity with EDI standards (ANSI X12, EDIFACT) and implementing EDI order flows, acknowledgements (997), and despatch advices (856).
  • Ability to write and run SQL queries to extract order and inventory data for analysis and troubleshooting.
  • Working knowledge of forecasting and demand planning tools (Kinaxis, JDA/Blue Yonder, Anaplan) and understanding how order signals impact inventory plans.
  • Experience with business intelligence and reporting tools (Power BI, Tableau, Qlik) to build dashboards and visualizations for OTIF and fill-rate metrics.
  • Knowledge of supply chain KPIs (OTIF, fill rate, lead time, backorder rate, DSO) and methods to measure and improve them.
  • Understanding of logistics and customs documentation, INCOTERMS, and export/import compliance impacting order release and shipment.
  • Familiarity with returns and RMA processing workflows, warranty handling and credit memo creation in ERP systems.
  • Basic scripting or automation skills (VBA, Python) beneficial to automate repetitive order reconciliation tasks.
  • Experience with inventory allocation logic, safety stock calculations and execution of allocation overrides in system.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional communication and stakeholder management: ability to clearly update customers, sales and internal teams on order status and disruptions.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail to identify root causes and implement corrective actions.
  • Customer-service orientation with a proactive mindset to manage expectations and preserve client relationships.
  • Organization and time management skills to prioritize multiple orders, escalations and continuous improvement projects.
  • Ability to work cross-functionally and influence without direct authority to coordinate complex fixes and drive process change.
  • Adaptability and resilience when working in high-volume, fast-changing environments and peak seasons.
  • Decision-making under ambiguity: balance commercial needs vs. inventory constraints with data-driven trade-offs.
  • Coaching and mentoring skills to develop junior team members and improve team throughput.
  • Continuous improvement mindset with experience participating in Lean or Kaizen events.
  • Negotiation and conflict resolution skills to reach workable outcomes with customers, carriers and suppliers.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Business Administration, Logistics, Industrial Engineering or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree plus supply chain certification (APICS CPIM / CSCP, ISM) or a Master’s degree in Supply Chain, MBA or related advanced degree.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Supply Chain Management
  • Logistics and Transportation
  • Operations Management
  • Business Administration
  • Industrial or Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2 - 5 years in order management, inventory or supply chain operations in manufacturing, distribution or retail environments.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years of direct order management experience in ERP-driven environments (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite).
  • Demonstrated experience managing high-volume order flows, allocations, backorder resolution and cross-functional escalations.
  • Prior exposure to S&OP processes, demand and supply planning interactions, and performance KPI ownership.
  • Experience working with EDI integrations, WMS/TMS coordination and logistics partners.
  • Experience using analytics (Excel, SQL, BI tools) to drive operational improvements and present findings to leadership.
  • Certifications such as APICS CPIM/CSCP, Six Sigma or Lean are a plus.
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