Why Omnichannel Order Routing Fails the Second You Start Growing

The Routing Problem That Sneaks Up on Every Brand

Order routing sounds simple when your brand is small. One channel, one warehouse, one lonely stack of boxes waiting to ship. Then your business gets traction. You add Amazon for reach, Shopify for control, Walmart for scale, and maybe a retail partner who sends purchase orders that look like someone lost a bet. Suddenly, what used to be a nice linear path turns into a branching maze of rules, exceptions, priorities, blackout dates, shipping promises, carrier changes, and customer expectations that rise faster than your blood pressure.

Here is the twist. Most brands do not notice their routing problems until after they have already done damage. A 2024 operations study found that more than half of growing ecommerce companies experienced fulfillment delays or misroutes directly caused by outdated routing logic or disconnected systems. It is not that the brand messed up. It is that their infrastructure was built for a calmer time that no longer exists.

Omnichannel order routing is not a back office function. It is the operating system of your revenue. When it works, orders flow to the right facility, ship on time, and arrive fast enough to keep customers loyal. When it fails, orders get routed to the wrong location, SLAs collapse, retailer compliance cracks, and your team has to explain a mess that no one can fully understand because three different systems disagree about what just happened.

Why Traditional Routing Logic Breaks Instantly

Legacy routing systems were never designed for omnichannel. They were built for single channel brands where every order looked the same. Today, orders come from everywhere, with requirements that contradict each other, timing that swings wildly, and customer expectations shaped by Amazon Prime even when the order itself has nothing to do with Amazon.

Most 3PLs try to handle this complexity using simple logic trees. If the order is east, route here. If the order is west, route there. If the order is priority, override something else. But this falls apart the moment inventory is not evenly distributed or when two facilities both claim availability while only one has the correct version, batch, or compliance labeling. It falls apart when carriers experience delays. It falls apart when one system updates faster than another. In other words, it falls apart constantly.

The real problem is that traditional routing rules do not adapt. They assume the world stands still. But omnichannel never stands still. Channels surge. Inventory shifts. Retailers change the rules. Marketplaces tighten delivery windows. And customers expect magic. Try routing with outdated logic and your operation becomes a daily scavenger hunt.

Where Inventory Fragmentation Turns Routing Into Chaos

Inventory accuracy is the foundation of routing accuracy. If your systems do not share one real time truth, routing attempts to make decisions using bad information. Shopify says a unit is available. Amazon thinks it is gone. Walmart thinks there are more than you actually have. Your 3PL thinks the inbound already arrived. The actual shelf disagrees with all of them.

When routing engines receive conflicting data, they do not politely raise their hands and ask for clarification. They simply choose whatever data source looks the least broken at the moment. This is how brands end up shipping orders from facilities that should not have received them or reserving inventory that does not exist. It is also how SLAs collapse and retailer scorecards suffer.

Why G10 Gets Routing Right When Everyone Else Gets It Wrong

G10 does not treat order routing like a series of guesses. Since 2009, the company has specialized in B2B, D2C, ecommerce, retail, wholesale, and fully compliant HAZMAT fulfillment. That means routing is not an optional feature. It is the backbone that ensures every channel works together instead of waging silent war.

ChannelPoint, G10's proprietary WMS, is what makes this possible. Instead of juggling multiple inventory sources, it pulls everything into a unified, real time system that always knows what is available, where it is located, and which facility is best positioned to ship the order fast enough to hit channel expectations. Nothing lags. Nothing drifts. Nothing guesses.

As Bryan Wright, CTO and COO, puts it logically: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it. At any moment I know where the product sits, how it moved, and what it is connected to." That level of accuracy turns routing from guesswork into a straightforward calculation.

Geography: The Secret Routing Multiplier

Routing is only as good as your physical network. If you have one warehouse, routing logic barely matters. But if you want two day coverage for the majority of the U.S., you need a distributed network and a routing brain that actually understands how to use it.

G10 operates strategically placed facilities in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. That footprint is not about being everywhere. It is about being smartly positioned so no region requires heroics. And because the entire network runs on the same WMS and real time inventory system, routing decisions are always correct instead of mostly correct.

Holly Woods, Director of Operations, explains it clearly: "Having strategically placed warehouses lets inbounds come in faster, which means we can get it distributed faster." Faster distribution means better routing. Better routing means happier customers. Happier customers mean higher repeat purchase rates, which directly impacts revenue.

The Human Layer Routing Depends On

Even the best routing engine collapses without the right eyes on it. Most 3PLs hand routing entirely to software and hope nothing explodes. But hope is not an operational strategy. When things go wrong in omnichannel, they rarely go wrong politely. A retailer changes a pallet requirement. A marketplace adjusts a delivery expectation. A promotion spikes demand in one region but not another. Someone has to make a human decision before automated systems compound the problem.

G10 builds that human layer into every account. Instead of surface level support, brands get a direct operations contact in Delavan, Wisconsin who monitors the system, evaluates exceptions, and steps in before any small error becomes a catastrophic routing mistake.

Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, explains it simply: "Every account at G10 has a direct point of contact. You only have to reach out to one person, and they work with the teams internally to make sure we execute for you the right way." Routing thrives when humans and systems work together instead of hoping the algorithm is in a good mood.

Scaling Without Breaking the Routing Logic

Growth is the ultimate test of routing quality. When order volume triples overnight because of a viral moment, a national TV feature, or a massive retailer order, routing must accelerate, not collapse. Poorly built routing systems crack under the strain. Real ones get sharper.

G10 built its routing foundation for chaos because chaos is what omnichannel growth looks like. The unified inventory, distributed network, optimized logic, and active human oversight mean that spikes are absorbed gracefully. A routing spike is not a crisis. It is just a busier day.

The Moment Routing Becomes a Competitive Advantage

Order routing is not a back office detail. It is the silent engine behind fast delivery, accurate fulfillment, and multi channel consistency. When routing is wrong, you feel it everywhere. When routing is right, you barely notice it because everything works.

When you are ready for routing that never guesses, never drifts, and never collapses under the weight of growth, G10 can give your brand the stable omnichannel foundation that competitors cannot copy.