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Michael Wholohan

Michael Wholohan

Head of Solution Engineering (APAC) at Fluent Commerce. Helping global enterprise retailers and distributors solve complex order and inventory management challenges.

I authored

40

articles. I write about:

Order Orchestration

10

Order customer service

9

Decision logic / Orchestration

9

Advanced Carrier Promising

7

Workflow

7

Customer Service

7

Availability management

7

Fulfillment Logic

6

Integrate

5

Order Reference Module

5

Sourcing

5

Enterprise Inventory Availability (GI)

5

Returns Management

4

Fulfillment Reference Module

4

Carrier

4

Fulfillment and allocation logic

4

Fulfillment Strategies

4

Intelligent Promising (FO)

4

Inventory Reference Module

4

Promising

4

Inventory monitoring

4

Return flow

3

Return entity

3

Web Apps

3

Order management lifecycle

3

Ship

3

Carrier manifest

3

Responsive Sourcing

3

Available to Promise (ATP) Feeds

3

Intelligent Inventory Processing

3

Inventory management lifecycle

3

Order Sourcing

3

Reservation

3

Core API

2

Order Capture

2

Refund

2

Store customer service

2

Payment processing

2

Trigger

2

Consignment

2

API

2

Virtual inventory position

2

Inventory position

2

Inventory processing

2

Recommended practices

2

Available connectors

2

Status

2

Estimated Delivery Times

2

GraphQL mutation

Fluent Distributed Order Management

Connectors

In-Store Returns

Authorization

Webhook

User action

Exchange flow

Pick & Pack

Allocation

Fluent Order Promising

OMS MCP Server

Monitor and alert

Ingestion

Rule performance

Discovery

Tracking success metrics

API recommendations

Payment Processing

Analytics and Reporting

Batch API

Developer tooling

Object attributes

Versioning

Modules

SDKs

Ruleset

GraphQL

Order domain entities

Platform flexibility

Fulfillment lifecycle

Inventory entities

Order Workflows

Location

Inventory quantity

Inventory catalog

Product List Page (PLP)

Batch processing

Virtual inventory catalog

Product Detail Page (PDP)

Inventory event processing

Pick

Collect/Pickup

Ship from Store

Click and Collect (CC)

Store fulfillment

Home Delivery (HD)

Order entity

Payment transaction entity

Appeasements

Cart Checkout

Blogs I have written

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Michael Wholohan

Use case: Click & Collect

Use case: Click & Collect

8 May 2025

15 min read

Docs I have written

Add new sales channels via a unified order management layer
Edited 232 days ago
Automate end-to-end returns processing
Edited 235 days ago
Automate proactive customer notifications
Edited 232 days ago
Enabling Post-order customer service
Edited 232 days ago
Centralise label generation and tracking access
Edited 235 days ago
Configure intelligent sourcing rules for optimal fulfillment
Edited 236 days ago
Display real-time stock availability online
Edited 232 days ago
Enable self-service online returns
Edited 232 days ago
Enable self-service order tracking and proactive updates
Edited 123 days ago
Enable visibility into future and in-transit inventory
Edited 236 days ago
Provide a single, real-time view of inventory
Edited 232 days ago
RFP Essential Knowledge: Architecture and Technical
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce is a cloud-native, API-first, event-driven platform built on AWS and GCP. This article covers the core architectural principles, API architecture, audit trail capabilities, data archiving approach, and scalability characteristics of the platform for technical evaluation and implementation planning purposes.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Compliance and Certifications
Edited 40 days ago
Fluent Commerce maintains a structured compliance programme covering security certifications, data protection obligations, and change management processes. The platform is SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR compliant, and built on AWS and GCP infrastructure, who hold more compliance certifications than any other providers. This article covers Fluent's audit and compliance posture, GDPR practices, certification status, and change management approach.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Customer Support
Edited 40 days ago
Fluent Commerce provides a multi-tiered support model encompassing platform support, customer success management, Expert Services, and account management. Support is delivered globally across the US, Canada, UK, France, and Australia (HQ). This article covers support structure, SLAs, implementation governance, and multi-brand deployment support.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Data Management and Privacy
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce acts as a data processor for client data within the Fluent OMS. This article covers database security practices, data ownership and portability, data destruction procedures, third-party data access controls, and data retention and archiving policies.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce's disaster recovery and business continuity posture is built on AWS's multi-region, multi-availability-zone infrastructure. The platform is designed for high availability with automatic failover, encrypted backups, and quarterly DR testing. This article covers backup and restore procedures, incident response, DR planning including RTO/RPO targets, and high availability architecture.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Fluent AI Capabilities
Edited 32 days ago
Fluent Commerce is built as an Agent Orchestration Platform — an intelligent OMS where AI is embedded in workflows, not bolted on from the outside. Intelligence is applied where commerce decisions are actually made: order promising, sourcing, fulfilment, customer service, and integration.

This article maps Fluent's AI capabilities to the evaluation categories commonly assessed in enterprise OMS RFQs and RFIs, distinguishing clearly between what is live in production, what is in pilot, and what is on the committed roadmap.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Fluent Analytics
Edited 32 days ago
Fluent Analytics is the native analytics experience built directly into the Fluent Order Management platform. It gives retailers real-time visibility into their order, inventory, and fulfilment operations — enabling faster, smarter decisions without needing to export data to an external tool first.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Fluent Commerce Order Orchestration
Edited 36 days ago
Fluent Commerce Order Management is the core orchestration layer for managing the full lifecycle of an order — from capture through fulfilment, modifications, and completion. Built on an API-first, event-driven architecture, the platform provides configurable workflows, flexible data models, and deep integration capabilities to support diverse order types across channels and regions.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Fluent Connect
Edited 32 days ago
Fluent Connect is Fluent Commerce's AI-powered integration platform, designed to eliminate one of the biggest barriers to OMS implementation: integration complexity. Traditionally, integrations consume approximately 50% of OMS project effort and budget. Fluent Connect changes this by offering AI-assisted, fully managed connectivity between Fluent Order Management and any third-party system — delivered in days, not months.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Fulfilment and Delivery
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Order Management provides a comprehensive suite of fulfilment capabilities spanning Click & Collect / BOPIS, Ship from Store, carrier management, delivery scheduling, and in-store pick, pack, and dispatch. All fulfilment flows are orchestrated through configurable workflows, enabling retailers to define, adapt, and optimise their fulfilment network with minimal development effort.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Information Security at Fluent Commerce
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce maintains a mature, multi-layered cybersecurity programme aligned with industry best practices and regulatory requirements. The platform is SOC 2 Type II certified and hosted on AWS infrastructure, which holds the most extensive set of compliance certifications available from a cloud provider. This article covers Fluent's security policies, access controls, vulnerability management, monitoring, and endpoint protection.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Infrastructure and Hosting
Edited 26 days ago
Fluent Commerce is a cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS platform hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It has been a cloud-hosted solution since its inception — unlike many platforms that were originally designed for on-premise deployment. This article covers the hosting architecture, network configuration, monitoring, browser requirements, and scalability capabilities of the platform.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Integrations and APIs
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce is an API-first, event-driven platform. All business capabilities are exposed via APIs, enabling 100% interoperability with backend, third-party, and headless front-end systems. The platform supports GraphQL, REST, webhooks, and event-based integration patterns, with a growing library of pre-built connectors and an extensible Connect SDK for building custom integrations.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Inventory Management
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce provides enterprise-grade inventory management through its Global Inventory and Big Inventory modules. These modules deliver real-time inventory visibility, flexible stock allocation, configurable availability calculations, and virtual catalogue segmentation — enabling retailers to manage distributed inventory across warehouses, stores, and third-party logistics providers from a single platform.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Legal and Commercial
Edited 39 days ago
This article covers Fluent Commerce's commercial model, including pricing, licensing, geographic availability, cost of ownership, and the partner and subcontracting approach. It is intended to support procurement and commercial evaluation processes.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Platform Configuration
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Order Management is designed for configurability at every layer — from low-code workflow design and UI composition to custom code extension via SDKs. This article covers the core configuration capabilities available to business users, developers, and implementation partners, including workflow configuration, user management, and multi-brand deployment patterns.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Product Catalogue
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Commerce provides a flexible product catalogue model to support the storage, management, and distribution of product and variant data across the OMS. While Fluent is not a Product Information Management (PIM) system, it ingests and exposes product data to support inventory tracking, order management, and fulfilment workflows. Product data is typically mastered in a PIM or eCommerce platform and pushed to Fluent via API.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Reporting and Analytics
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Order Management provides configurable dashboards, real-time reporting, and open APIs for feeding external Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics platforms. While Fluent includes native reporting capabilities for operational day-to-day use, it is designed to work alongside dedicated analytics solutions for advanced data visualisation and reporting requirements.
RFP Essential Knowledge: Returns and Refunds
Edited 39 days ago
Fluent Order Management provides comprehensive return and refund capabilities, including return order creation, inventory adjustment, refund workflow configuration, and configurable reason codes. Returns can be initiated via Fluent Store (in-store), the Fluent OMS, or via API — enabling omnichannel return journeys.
Unify tracking for multi-shipment orders
Edited 232 days ago
Provide accurate, real-time delivery ETA to customers
Edited 236 days ago
Split orders across multiple fulfilment locations
Edited 235 days ago
Integrate carrier booking inside the order management system
Edited 235 days ago
Prevent short-pick cancellations with real-time inventory reservation
Edited 232 days ago
Provide real-time end-to-end order observability
Edited 232 days ago
Offer flexible pickup and delivery options
Edited 232 days ago
Make changes and amendments to in-flight orders
Edited 232 days ago
Make "Before the buy" Inventory Checks to fulfil more orders in full
Edited 232 days ago
Disclaimer: All information and resources found on community.fluentcommerce.com are based on the opinions of the author (unless otherwise noted). All information is intended to inspire and motivate well thought through technical decisions inline with Fluent Commerce recommended practices and principles.

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