Operations Management Software

The Essence of Operations Management Software

Operations management software (OMS) helps plan, monitor, and coordinate production and service operations, digitalize daily employee workflows, identify and mitigate operational process bottlenecks.

Choose the OMS Type You’re Interested In

Software for service operations

For service- and project-centric companies that need to optimize service-related activities and improve management of human resources, projects, service requests, supply chain, T&E, service-related documents.

Software for production operations

For manufacturing-centric enterprises that need to optimize production activities and improve management of inventory, warehouses, workforce, machinery and equipment maintenance, purchase and sales orders.

Factors that Drive ROI of an Operations Management System

In OMS projects, ScienceSoft always seeks to cover the following important factors that may bring additional value for the customer across operations management processes

End-to-end workflow automation

To improve the productivity of the employees involved in business operations, speed up operational processes, reduce labor costs, and eliminate human errors.

Comprehensive data analytics

To ensure accurate, data-driven operations planning and get intelligent recommendations on optimal resource utilization and operational risk prevention.

Focus on security

To protect the OMS and sensitive data it stores by employing multi-factor authentication, role-based access control, data encryption, AI-powered fraud detection, and other advanced cybersecurity tools.

Mobile access

To enable the operations teams to control the status of production/service operations on the go, streamline the reporting on operations progress and escalation of operational process issues.

Key Features of Service Operations Management Software

Service operations management solutions may cater for businesses with both one-time projects and continuous service operations. They help streamline daily workflows for multiple user groups – operations and resource managers, project managers, service delivery teams, and others. Below, ScienceSoft shares a sample feature set of service operations management software.

Service planning and optimization (for managers)

  • Setting up service-related workflows (approval workflows, corporate policies to follow, etc.).
  • Continuous service improvement management (identifying service best practices, gathering employees’ ideas and conducting votes on service improvement ideas).
  • Service level agreement management.

Project tasks and service requests management

  • Task/request assignment and progress status tracking.
  • Automated booking of employees’ working hours based on assigned activities.
  • Configurable task/request schedule viewer for employees/teams (with a calendar view, Gantt chart view, etc.).

Time and expense management

  • Configurable timesheets and expense claim forms.
  • Time tracking of employees’ billable and non-billable hours.
  • Expense tracking (submitting receipts for transportation expenses, etc.).
  • Automated approval workflow for employees’ timesheets and expense claims.
  • Automated invoice generation (based on approved billable hours and expenses) and status tracking (approved/pending, etc.).

Document management

  • Centralized view of human resource data (employee profiles with up-to-date information on skills, availability, workload, and bill rates).
  • Human resource allocation (comparing skill sets available in employee profiles and assigning fitting candidates to projects/service requests).
  • AI-driven suggestions on resource allocation.
  • Real-time resource demand forecasting (based on the analysis of available capacity).
  • Configurable capacity utilization dashboards (allow checking capacity per specific periods, business units, departments, etc.).
  • Alerting on resource under- or overutilization to resource managers and PMs.
  • AI-driven recommendations on where to engage under-utilized resources.

Project management

  • Project planning (setting up goals, milestones, timeline, budget, stakeholders, etc.).
  • Project process breakdown (creating and editing tasks and sub-tasks required to complete a project).
  • Project time and resources estimation based on historical data about completed projects.
  • Form-based resource request creation and automated routing to resource managers.
  • Current vs. planned project progress monitoring.
  • Current vs. forecast project margin monitoring.
  • Project budget monitoring (burn rate, remaining budget, etc.).
  • Security and compliance monitoring (critical, e.g., for IT operations management software).
  • Configurable alerts on deadlines, project risks, etc. (for project managers and team members).

Supply management

  • Barcode-based tracking of supplies’ quantity and location.
  • Setup of reorder levels and alerts for low-stock supplies (can be tuned for different locations).
  • Supply purchase order creation and approval.
  • Purchase order status tracking and history overview.
  • Setup of preferred suppliers for ordering.
  • Supply demand forecasting (based on historical demand data and seasonal demand fluctuations).

Project and service analytics

  • Change impact analysis (shows how changes, e.g. unexpected delays, affect service schedule or project progress).
  • Revenue forecasting based on real-time monitoring of service/project delivery (can be drilled down by service types or projects, clients, business units, etc.).
  • Resource utilization reports.
  • AI-based project/service risk assessment (e.g., comparing customer demand with a company’s current resource capacity).

Key Features of Production Operations Management Software

Having in-depth experience in building production operations management tools, ScienceSoft shares a sample feature set that forms the solution core. However, each real-life use case for such software is unique, so functionality should be elaborated on and tailored to the business specifics accordingly.

Production planning

  • Production KPIs setup and monitoring (e.g., production volume and costs).
  • Material requirements planning.
  • Production scheduling.
  • Automated production schedule adjustment (e.g., in case of incoming make-to-order requests or production delays).

Operations optimization

  • AI suggestions for production optimization (based on historical production data).
  • Multi-plant production optimization (balancing production load across several plants).
  • What-if production scenario modeling and cross-comparison (to generate different options of a production schedule and choose the best one).
  • Multi-location inventory optimization (calculating optimal inventory levels across warehouses based on multiple factors, from sales data to weather conditions).

Production order management

  • Production order creation (with auto-attachment of BOMs, e.g., via an integration with PLM software).
  • Automated estimation of production order costs and capacity requirements (based on product specifications).
  • Automated reservation of materials for a production order.
  • Production order routing (defining the sequence of operations to produce a product, integrating an order into the production schedule) and status tracking.
  • Automated generation of a production order receipt (with the final calculation of production costs based on the recorded material, machine and workforce usage).

Inventory management

  • Inventory levels monitoring
  • Time tracking of employees’ billable and non-billable hours.
  • Setup of inventory reorder points and automated trigger of purchase orders.
  • Alerts on low-level inventory.
  • Creation, routing and status tracking of inventory transfer orders.

Sales order management

  • Sales order creation and status tracking.
  • Human resource allocation (comparing skill sets available in employee profiles and assigning fitting candidates to projects/service requests).
  • Automated invoice generation and routing for approval.
  • Automated generation of purchase and/or production orders from a sales order.
  • Automated inventory reservation for a sales order.

Purchase order management

  • Purchase order request creation and automated routing for approval.
  • Purchase order creation and status tracking.
  • Project time and resources estimation based on historical data about completed projects.
  • Setup of preferred suppliers for particular inventory groups.
  • Setup of spend limits per user/department (on purchase orders).

Workforce management

  • Workforce scheduling (production and maintenance workers, etc.).
  • Workforce performance reports.
  • Instant messaging (for easy communication between planners and operations managers and the shop-floor personnel and vice versa).

Machinery and equipment maintenance management

  • Machine maintenance scheduling (for regular maintenance activities coordinated with a production schedule).
  • Maintenance request creation and automated routing for approval (for on-demand activities, e.g., in case of machine malfunction or irregular performance).
  • Maintenance order assignment and status tracking.
  • Predictive maintenance for equipment.

Production quality control

  • Quick form-based creation of quality control charts.
  • Scheduling and assignment of quality checks (with auto-attachment of quality control charts).
  • Alert escalation on defective products (to production supervisors).

Analytics and reporting

  • Product demand forecasting.
  • Product demand vs. production capacity analysis.
  • Workforce demand forecasting.
  • Impact analysis for production schedule adjustments (to see how current production orders will be affected by the changes).
  • Capacity utilization reports (on machine and workforce utilization).
  • Production reports (on the production outputs at a given period, e.g. day/week).
  • Production costs monitoring and analysis.
  • Inventory carrying costs analysis.
  • Inventory purchasing reports (with historical costs trends).