Why You Use Backlog Management

You use the Backlog Management work area to plan the fulfillment of orders that are at risk of delay. Let's first understand the pain points associated with optimizing order fulfillment, and then learn how the backlog management application can resolve them.

Pain Points in Order Management

Orders are scheduled in real time by Oracle Global Order Promising from Oracle Fusion Cloud Order Management. Orders that arrive first get scheduled for fulfillment first. So, important orders may not get satisfactory scheduled dates if they were created after other orders, which already consumed supply because they were scheduled earlier. Also, item supply availability changes daily, so the current scheduled dates on orders may not be realistic. For example, some dates could have been pulled in because of others, and some may be delayed or moved out because the supply situation got worse.

To change scheduled dates after identifying which orders are affected by changed supply availability, order managers would have to first select orders in Order Management or in Global Order Promising and then simulate promising. This is a manual, drawn-out process.

How Backlog Management Helps

Backlog Management makes it easy to identify orders with scheduled dates that are at risk and which can be improved. The fulfillment for these orders can then be mass-planned manually or through a scheduled process. Orders are prioritized for fulfillment based on a user-specified priority sequence. According to this priority sequence, supply is allocated to orders to determine Planned dates on those orders. Users compare planned dates with existing scheduled dates to understand how much an order's fulfillment prospects can improve.

Users can also perform a variety of simulations to influence the planning results. For example, they can reprioritize orders, decommit some orders, and even change attribute values to run a planning simulation without impacting the actual scheduling information. Any updates to the actual scheduling information happen only when the user releases planning results after backlog planning.