Getting to the heart of the omnichannel experience

Entering a World Market store is like diving headfirst into a treasure trove. As a visitor, you are greeted by an assortment of vibrant colors, patterns and light. The company serves up eclectic goods from across the globe—on-trend furniture, international foods and wines, unique home décor, and gifts.

That distinctive variety of offerings has drawn a steady stream of customers throughout significant global and organizational shifts, including an acquisition by Bed Bath & Beyond in 2012 and a subsequent acquisition by a private equity firm in January of 2021.

Abhijit Roy (Abhi), Senior Manager of Omni Channel Solutions, joined World Market in late 2020, shortly before finalization of the most recent acquisition. At that time, the company was evaluating its entire IT infrastructure, much of which was outdated, and preparing for a digital transformation. The company’s e-commerce infrastructure was at the top of the list for revamping.

In May 2021, Abhi quickly got to work developing a long-term omnichannel modernization strategy. At the center of that strategy was the company’s order management system (OMS), which does the behind-the-scenes work of managing orders and inventory—from order placement through delivery.

“A unified order management system is the heart of our omnichannel transformation,” says Abhi. “You need a good heart first and then you can roll out the brains, legs and hands—such as e-commerce, ERP, warehouse management—around it.”

The company had an OMS in place, but it lacked the scalability and functionality needed for future growth. When a customer bought an item online, for example, the order was fulfilled from three warehouses—two on the East Coast, and one on the West Coast. It could take more than a week for an item to arrive at a customer’s doorstep. Store associates, call center personnel and customers couldn’t view inventory supply information in real time. The system wasn’t able to accommodate customers buying an item online and having it shipped to a nearby store for pickup—otherwise known as buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS).

It also wasn’t possible within the system to ship items from a nearby store to a customer’s home. Moreover, if a customer ordered an item online but walked into a store two days later, saw the item there and wanted to take it home, the World Market sales associate couldn’t just apply the online order to the item in the store. Instead, the customer had to buy the item in the store and either cancel the online order or return the item once it was delivered.

World Market set out to replace its OMS with a new, more robust solution—one that could act as the foundation for its digital transformation, providing centralized, real-time visibility, order management, inventory and fulfillment across its network.

To assist with developing and implementing its e-commerce strategy, the company brought in IBM Business Partner Nextuple, LLC. According to Laxman Mandayam, Head of Customer Solutions & Co-Founder of Nextuple, the selection process for a new OMS was brief. “Very quickly, we zeroed in on the fact that IBM Sterling Order Management was probably the best fit for what World Market wanted to accomplish. So, the effort was more in figuring out the costs and logistics of migrating from its existing OMS system to the IBM system.”

The IBM Sterling® Order Management solution includes call center, inventory visibility and engagement components. Combined, they provide the omnichannel order fulfillment capabilities that World Market needs.

The store engagement component supports BOPIS and ship-from-store capabilities and gives store associates the ability to offer add-on services based on a customer’s circumstances. Additionally, inventory visibility enables real-time inventory supply and demand activity management across channels. The call center provides a single point of access from which customer service representatives or customers can place, cancel and adjust orders over the phone.

Once the decision was made, the World Market, Nextuple and IBM teams set about creating a roadmap for deployment. IBM offered the industry expertise and knowledge to help guide the company throughout the planning and implementation phases and beyond—from onboarding World Market employees to conducting design reviews to recommending tools and best practices.

The first area the three teams addressed was enabling the BOPIS capabilities of the system. Working in sprints, the team rolled out the solution in phases, with an initial pilot going live in two stores, followed by 24 more stores and ultimately all 242 World Market locations by February of 2022—a mere four months from start to finish. Prior to going live, IBM provided train-the-trainer sessions to key personnel on how to operate and use the system.

Several factors contributed to the speed and efficiency of the implementation. First, Nextuple, World Market and IBM acted as one team, collaborating in a highly organized fashion. Also, as a cloud-based software-as-a service (SaaS) solution, much of the configuration was predefined, so the team could focus its attention on integrating and testing it.

And crucially, prior to and throughout the implementation, the team gathered input from the store operations managers to ensure functionality and usability were aligned with the needs of store associates and operations personnel.

Once the BOPIS capabilities were running live in stores, World Market turned to the next phase of implementation: enabling ship-from-store capabilities. The retailer aimed to reduce its shipping costs and to deliver customer orders faster by decreasing the distance of direct shipments. The capability was initially implemented in 40 stores in November 2022 and has since expanded to 102 stores in 2025.

Today, World Market is seeing multiple benefits from its IBM Sterling Order Management solution. “Our ship-to-store was a game-changer in phase one,” says Abhi. “We have decoupled the inventory, the BOPIS and ship-to-store workflows. Now when a store receives a truck, customers don’t have to wait for 14 days to get their items. They can get them in two or three days.”

Since BOPIS capabilities launched in early 2021, customers have increasingly taken advantage of them to save on shipping costs. “From Independence Day to Labor Day, we had a lot of ship-to-store orders—sofas, backyard furniture, bedroom furniture,” says Abhi. “And now, 67% – 68% of total e-commerce orders are BOPIS. That could not have been possible without the new OMS.”

“We do ship-from-store now,” he continues. “Instead of shipping a sofa all the way from Virginia to Los Angeles, we can ship the sofa from Stockton, B.C., in California, to a store near the customer’s home. And then with a small van, we can deliver it to the customer, saving a lot of money and time.”

Store associates and call center representatives can now directly access inventory and order information for customers through an interface. Inventory information is up-to-date and available in real time to store associates and operations personnel. Associates can modify existing orders or adjust pricing to reflect newly available discounts on existing orders instantly—without having to cancel and reorder items.

World Market has also added an inventory hold feature that enables customers to request a hold online, which immediately updates inventory in the system. It’s just one example of a minor change with major customer service ramifications.

The relationship between World Market, Nextuple and IBM remains strong, bolstered by regular cadence calls to keep things running smoothly and explore new features. “It’s a great partnership,” says Abhi. “Both companies continue to be part of our OMS projects. Next up, we are starting on the e-commerce journey. Recently, we’ve discussed possible upgrades to the current store solution including a new micro front-end and also the call center modernization that is coming down the pike next year.”

The project has further fortified the partnership between Nextuple and IBM. “We have an excellent relationship with IBM,” says Darpan Seth, CEO & Co-Founder of Nextuple, “We have been working with this IBM OMS solution for several years now and have deployed it in many accounts with tremendous success. We really trust it.”

“We have a true partnership,” agrees Ritika Chaudhury, Head of GTM & Partnerships at Nextuple. She continues, “Sometimes it surprises clients that we can email a multibillion-dollar company and have the Head of Products respond. If we did not have that support from IBM, we wouldn’t be as successful as we are.”

Founded in 1958, World Market (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a US retail chain with more than 240 stores. World Market is headquartered in Alameda, California.

IBM Business Partner Nextuple (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a specialised IT services & consulting firm that helps retailers, grocers, and B2B distributors modernize inventory and order management. Through modern system integrations, bespoke AI-powered solutions, and strategic insights, Nextuple helps businesses deliver exceptional experiences, enhance operational agility, and drive sustainable growth.