Dylan Telford and Rutvee Shah on Why B2B Distributors Are Moving Order Management Out of the ERP

The ERP Still Owns the Finances, Not the Fulfillment

Telford opened the conversation by pointing out that the question is not whether a company should rely on its ERP. It is what the company is trying to accomplish. Many B2B organizations have run on the same ERP for decades because it centralizes finance, inventory, and operations in one place. That consolidation made sense when implementation cycles took years and switching platforms was disruptive.

The ERP is still the king of finance for sure.

— Dylan Telford, VP and Head of Order Operations, Aries Solutions

What has changed, Telford said, is that companies are learning to separate the ERP's role as a financial system of record from the operational decisions that used to live inside it, such as order routing, inventory allocation, and fulfillment sequencing. Abstracting those capabilities into a dedicated order management system reduces a company's dependence on a single platform and makes it easier to adjust as needs change.

Shah described how this pattern has played out across the distributors and wholesalers she works with at Kibo. Many spent years customizing their ERP to match internal processes, and those customizations solved real problems at the time. But every new fulfillment model, warehouse, or sales channel now requires more custom work, which drives up the cost of maintaining the system.

A lot of wholesalers today have spent years, sometimes decades, customizing their ERP to fit their processes.

— Rutvee Shah, Director of Product, Kibo

Her recommendation for distributors expanding into new fulfillment models, whether that means shipping from additional distribution centers or launching a new sales channel, is to treat the order management layer as the place where that flexibility should live, while the ERP stays focused on the financial record.

What an Order Management System Actually Does

Justin King asked Shah to define the term for listeners who hear "OMS" without a clear picture of what it covers. She described it as a centralized view of inventory across every location a company uses, paired with rules that decide how each order gets fulfilled. Those rules can account for which customer is placing the order, shipping cost, delivery commitments, and whether a strategic account should get priority access to limited inventory.

Kibo's platform, she said, is releasing new reservation and order release rules that protect priority accounts and keep orders on track to meet promised delivery dates, along with an allocation rebalancer that reassigns shipments automatically when supply conditions change, such as a drop in available inventory. The goal is to replace the manual review that planners have historically done order by order.

Telford added a distinction that he said trips people up: an order management system does not compete with the ERP for ownership of finances or final operational visibility. It manages the live, active order as it moves through the fulfillment process, a responsibility that many companies previously buried inside the ERP itself or handled through separate front end systems.

Fulfillment Complexity Is the Real Challenge

King asked the pair to walk through the fulfillment side of the business specifically, since so much conversation about B2B eCommerce focuses on the buying experience rather than what happens after checkout. Telford pointed to orders that require parts from multiple locations to be consolidated into a single delivery, contractual shipping requirements that vary by client, and minimum shipment thresholds that force a company to batch orders rather than ship every item as it becomes available.

Shah connected that complexity back to the order management system's job: checking current and future inventory against a requested ship date, then coordinating with an order routing system to determine the most cost effective fulfillment path. She also pointed to the reverse logistics side of the business, where return windows, resellable inventory, and credit memos for key accounts all need to be tracked according to rules that differ by customer.

Where AI Fits, and Where It Should Not Make the Call

The conversation closed on AI, a subject King said comes up in nearly every episode this year. Shah described several practical uses already live at Kibo, including an AI assistant that helps customer service representatives summarize an order and explain a delay without searching multiple systems, and a natural language tool that helps administrators configure order management capabilities without digging through documentation.

She was direct about where she draws the line.

AI should always be a recommendation layer and not a decision layer.

— Rutvee Shah, Director of Product, Kibo

King pushed back gently, comparing it to managing employees. A new hire starts by making recommendations, and once those recommendations prove reliable over time, a manager starts trusting them to make the decision outright. He said his own team has taken that same approach with AI agents running parts of B2BEA's operations.

Telford agreed, framing the shift in terms of trust built over time rather than a fixed rule. He described the difference between a generative tool that only answers questions and an agent that can act on a company's behalf.

The difference between an agent and a generative engine is it has the ability to act for you.

— Dylan Telford, VP and Head of Order Operations, Aries Solutions

The tradeoff he pointed to is one every operations leader will eventually face: constrain an AI agent too tightly and it only reinforces the status quo, but open its authority too quickly and a company loses the oversight that catches mistakes before they reach a customer.

The Bigger Pattern

Underneath the technical detail, the conversation returned repeatedly to a single idea: B2B buyers increasingly expect the same visibility and self-service they get as consumers, even though the underlying transactions, contracts, and approval workflows are far more complex. According to Oro's 2026 B2B eCommerce trends analysis, buyers now expect accurate pricing and product data to follow them whether they are searching a website directly or working through an AI tool, which puts pressure on companies to keep their ERP, PIM, and OMS systems in sync. Salsify's research on 2026 buying behavior found that a majority of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free purchasing experience for at least part of their journey, reinforcing why fulfillment accuracy and order visibility have become as important as the storefront itself.

That pressure is exactly why the ERP versus OMS conversation matters beyond the IT department.

About the Guests

Dylan Telford is Vice President and Head of Order Operations at Aries Solutions. He brings more than 20 years of retail experience across store, digital, and supply chain operations, including strategic leadership roles at major omnichannel retailers focused on market share growth, transactional performance, and customer experience.

Rutvee Shah is Director of Product at Kibo. She has more than 14 years of experience building and scaling SaaS platforms for eCommerce and order management, partnering with global retailers and brands to improve the customer lifecycle from discovery through post-purchase service.

About the Host
Justin King is the Global Managing Director and Chief AI Officer for the B2B eCommerce Association and hosts The B2B eCommerce Show, where he interviews practitioners and technology leaders shaping how manufacturers and distributors sell online.