In the age of digital commerce, order volume and complexity are booming. With sales flowing in from marketplaces, direct websites, retail stores, and B2B platforms, businesses are drowning in a flood of unstructured order data. Unfortunately, this chaos isn't just a data problem. It’s a revenue problem.
Unstructured orders — in the form of emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, EDI feeds, and inconsistent API payloads — are entering your ERP system and ending up in a dreaded state: error. And when an order hits that error queue, revenue gets delayed, customers get frustrated, and operations slow to a crawl.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Cost of Messy Orders
At its core, Merkle’s Order Orchestration capability is an AI-based solution that cleanly and accurately maps unstructured order data into the structure needed for order processing and fulfillment.
When orders arrive unstructured or incomplete, they:
- Fail validation rules and are routed to exception handling queues.
- Trigger manual interventions, slowing down fulfillment cycles.
- Create inventory mismatches, over/under-fulfillment, or pricing inconsistencies.
- Lead to refunds, returns, and eroded customer trust.
Every order that sits in an error state is a delayed cash flow event. In high-volume environments, this compounds into millions in unrealized revenue.
The Fix: Merkle’s AI-Powered Order Ingestion + Orchestration in Salesforce OMS
Enter AI-based order orchestration, a natural companion to Salesforce OMS.
With AI layered on top of Salesforce’s already robust order management platform, businesses can:
- Ingest Any Order Format
Using machine learning and natural language processing, our AI-based solution can parse emails, PDFs, Excel sheets, EDI, and even chat-based orders, extracting the relevant data (SKUs, quantities, customer info) and transforming it into Salesforce with or without the use of middleware.
- Auto-Map Orders to the Right Products, Prices, and Workflows
No more mapping attributes manually. The AI model can learn your catalog structure and order behavior, automatically mapping vague or inconsistent order line items to the correct Salesforce product SKUs and pricing tiers, reducing mismatches and manual cleanup.
- Prevent Error States
With intelligent validation and enrichment, AI ensures orders meet all the criteria Salesforce OMS expects before they ever hit your system. That means fewer exceptions, cleaner processing, and orders that flow straight through from entry to fulfillment.
- Learn and Improve Over Time
Unlike static rule engines, AI systems learn from past exceptions, operator corrections, and changes in product offerings. Over time, the system becomes more accurate and less dependent on manual oversight.
From Error Queues to Efficiency
When integrated into Salesforce OMS, our AI-based order orchestration doesn’t just clean up data — it transforms the end-to-end order journey:
- Ops teams stop firefighting exceptions.
- Sales teams gain confidence that orders won’t stall.
- Customers receive their products faster and with fewer issues.
- Finance sees better cash flow and fewer write-offs.
- Leadership gets insight into where and why errors occur, and how they’re being resolved.
Why It Matters Now
With consumer expectations at an all-time high and competition one click away, order orchestration is a revenue-critical function. Salesforce OMS provides a strong foundation. But without clean data going in, even the best OMS can only do so much.
By combining Salesforce OMS with Merkle’s AI-powered Order Orchestration solution, you’re not just solving a technical problem. You’re unlocking faster fulfillment, higher margins, and better customer experiences at scale.
