As the modern day consumer is spoilt for choice, it poses a challenge for retailers to zero down on their preferred channel of shopping. Customers interact with multiple channels and switch between them interchangeably to suit their demands. For retailers, this translates into the need to ease the process of finding the desired product across channels, for the consumers by anticipating the demand and optimizing the cross-channel inventory accordingly so that no opportunities are lost. To achieve this, retail businesses need to look at changing the way they think about and deal with their cross-channel inventory management.
The current omni-channel business models demand for a flexible and seamless inventory management at the core of the supply chain. A versatile inventory flow, that accommodates the frequent changes in consumer preferences across channels – be it physical stores or e-commerce – is essential. Retailers need to work on 2 main factors: allocation and replenishment.
The solution for retailers to tackle this is a single comprehensive omni-channel suite that seamlessly integrates channels. Such a system can enable examination of the inventory pool and allocate or replenish the stock based on pre-defined business rules and the business intelligence data acquired from across the different shopping channels. Based on analysis of the data captured, retailers can define strategies to manage cross-channel inventory. Thus, the solution can help to eliminate hurdles in inventory management and enable retailers to have a comprehensive view of their cross-channel supply chain. They can respond to trends quickly and optimize performance of their merchandise and assortments across the physical and online channels, reduce markdowns as well as satisfy customer expectations.
ETP V5 Omni-Channel Retail Suite consists of an enterprise-class multi-channel, multi-currency, and multi-lingual inventory management software solution which addresses the key needs of this dynamic industry such as merchandise management, sourcing, e-commerce order management, warehousing, sales, inventory management, replenishment planning, procurement, allocation and distribution. The system allows retailers to link up with the ETP Merchandise and Assortment planning solutions to execute their procurement based on the OTB Plan. This ensures that they buy right, distribute, allocate and deliver right.
