Tag: real-time inventory

One System, All Your Stock: How a Unified Inventory Management System Can Save Your Day

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

Running a business is a juggling act. From marketing and sales to customer service and operations, there’s a constant flow of tasks demanding your attention. Inventory management, however, often becomes a tangled mess in this juggling act. Spreadsheets overflow, manual counts are error-prone, and stockouts lead to frustrated customers. This is where a unified inventory management system comes in-a superhero ready to swoop down and save the day.

The Struggles of Fragmented Inventory Management

Many businesses rely on a patchwork of systems to manage their inventory. Spreadsheets for basic stock counts, separate databases for warehouse locations, and manual order forms-the list goes on. This fragmented approach creates a breeding ground for chaos:

  • Inaccurate Data: Manual data entry across multiple systems leaves room for errors, leading to discrepancies and inaccurate stock levels.
  • Inefficient Processes: Time is wasted jumping between systems to track inventory, process orders, and generate reports.
  • Poor Visibility: Having a holistic view of stock across different locations and channels becomes nearly impossible, making it difficult to anticipate stockouts and optimise ordering.
  • Frustrated Customers: Stockouts lead to lost sales and unhappy customers.
  • Increased Costs: Inaccurate data can lead to overstocking or understocking, both of which translate to lost money.

Enter the Hero: The Unified Inventory Management System

A unified inventory management system acts as the central nervous system for your stock. It integrates all aspects of inventory control into a single platform, offering a real-time, centralised view of your stock across all locations, channels, and warehouses.

How does a unified commerce solution empower your business?

Implementing a unified inventory management system unlocks a treasure trove of benefits that empower your business to operate more efficiently and profitably:

  • Real-Time Inventory Visibility: Gain a bird’s eye view of your entire stock, from raw materials to finished products, across all locations. No more scrambling to find accurate stock levels!
  • Reduced Errors: Eliminate the human element of manual data entry and streamline processes, minimising errors and ensuring data integrity.
  • Improved Forecasting and Ordering: Utilise accurate data to forecast demand and automate reorder points. No more scrambling to avoid stockouts or tying up cash in unnecessary inventory.
  • Enhanced Warehouse Management: Manage stock movements and locations within your warehouse, optimise picking and packing processes, and ensure on-time deliveries.
  • Streamlined Reporting and Analytics: Generate comprehensive reports on inventory levels, sales trends, and supplier performance. Use data-driven insights to optimise your stock management strategy.
  • Improved Customer Satisfaction: Reduced stockouts mean happier customers who get what they need when they need it.
  • Cost Savings: Reduce overhead costs associated with manual processes, improve inventory turnover, and optimise storage space.

Presenting ETP Unify: Your Inventory Management Superhero

ETP Unify is a powerful cloud-native Unified Commerce Retail Solution. Built using MACH Architecture, it brings the best of retail and e-commerce functionality to the user in one, easy-to-use, beautiful interface. With all information stored in one database, it empowers retail merchants and managers to have all the information and tools at their fingertips to serve customers across channels, helping create an amazing experience for consumers.

With ETP Unify’s Unified Inventory Management module, you get to monitor inventory in real-time, ensuring the right products are available at the right place and at the right time. The UIM module provides a consolidated view of inventory across all channels and products, allowing users to customise views based on attributes like brand, product catalog, and tags. It offers the users visibility into various stock metrics along with the ability to download relevant information. Maintain a unified view of inventory of all products across all nodes, stores, and warehouses to minimise revenue losses due to stock shortages.

ETP Unify’s unified inventory management offers the following features to simplify and streamline your stock management:

  • Unify inventory data across multiple nodes, stores and warehouses: Unified retail commerce like ETP Unify consolidates stock data in real-time from across multiple fulfilment centres – distribution centres, warehouses, and stores. Centralised inventory management eases stock allocation and order fulfilment. With the inventory lookup function in ETP Unify, you can reduce lost sales for the stock available in the back-of-the-house storage.
  • Unified inventory real-time syncs across physical stores, marketplaces and webstores: Ensure your inventory data across channels is accurate and updated so that you can fulfil all orders and satisfy your customers. Especially when you are running promotions, your stock levels can be managed effectively for maximum turn. With ETP’s unified commerce and its real-time inventory sync across channels, you can ensure higher sales, a greater order fulfilment percentage, and a higher inventory turnaround.
  • Reduce costs for a better cash flow management: Lower your inventory obsolescence and markdowns through better inventory utilisation using FIFO. Reduce the need for more warehousing space by managing fulfilment from your store’s back office and by using them as regional warehouses.

The Takeaway

In today’s competitive business landscape, efficient inventory management is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. By replacing your disparate systems with a unified inventory management system like ETP Unify, you gain a centralised platform to manage all your stock effectively. This translates to increased efficiency, reduced errors, improved customer satisfaction, and ultimately, a healthier bottom line. Stop juggling your inventory management; let ETP Unify be your superhero, saving the day with real-time data, streamlined processes, and empowered inventory control.

Ready to experience the power of ETP Unify’s unified inventory management system? Contact us today!

5 Game-Changing Advantages of Unified Commerce for Retailers

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

Today’s shoppers are no longer confined to a single channel. They browse online, compare prices in-store, and expect a seamless experience no matter how they choose to interact with your brand. This omnichannel reality demands a retail approach that transcends the limitations of separate online and offline systems. Enter unified commerce: a revolutionary strategy that centralizes the data you’ve collected about customers and products on a single platform. These platforms can interconnect systems of e-commerce, mobile commerce, customer relationship management, order management systems, omnichannel order fulfilment, analytics, and more to help provide insights into how to improve the customer experience. 

The goal of unified commerce is to promote personalized shopping experiences that meet consumer expectations. It is necessary to align all the sales channels to offer the same information that the customer expects, ensure there is a constant flow of information being shared, and reduce data silos on a given channel.

This blog delves into the 5 game-changing advantages unified commerce offers retailers. 

But first, let’s discuss:

How does a unified commerce strategy differ from an omni-channel strategy?

Imagine shopping for a new jacket. You browse styles online, check for sizes in-store, and then decide to order it for home delivery. But what if the store says the jacket is out of stock online, even though you saw it on the website? Frustrating, right?

This is where a unified commerce platform comes in. It’s like having one big system for everything, instead of separate ones for online and in-store shopping. Here’s how it’s different from what most stores do now:

Regular stores:  Think of them as islands.  They might have different systems for online shopping and what happens in the store, and these systems don’t always talk to each other. This can lead to mistakes, like showing an item as out of stock when it’s actually on the shelf.

Unified commerce: It’s like a bridge connecting all the islands.  This system keeps everything in sync, so you get the same information and experience no matter how you shop. You can see what’s in stock online and in-store, buy online and pick up at the store, or even return an online purchase in-store. It’s all smooth and connected.

In short, unified commerce gives you a single, seamless shopping experience across all channels, online or offline.

5 Game-Changing Advantages of Unified Commerce for Retailers

1. Enhanced Customer Experience

Unified commerce enables retailers to offer a seamless and personalized shopping experience to their customers across multiple channels, including online, mobile, social media, and physical stores. 

By consolidating customer data from various touchpoints into a single, centralized platform, retailers gain a 360-degree view of their customer’s preferences, behaviors, and purchase histories. This allows retailers to deliver targeted promotions, recommendations, and personalized experiences that resonate with individual customers, driving greater satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Increased Operational Efficiency

By integrating disparate systems and processes into a unified commerce platform, retailers streamline their operations and eliminate the inefficiencies associated with managing multiple systems and databases. 

Its solutions enable retailers to automate key processes such as inventory management, order fulfillment, and customer service, reducing manual errors and improving overall efficiency. This not only frees up valuable time and resources but also allows retailers to focus on strategic initiatives that drive growth and innovation.

3. Seamless Omnichannel Selling

Omnichannel retailing has become the new norm, with consumers expecting a consistent shopping experience across all channels. It enables retailers to seamlessly integrate their online and offline channels, allowing customers to browse, shop, and transact across multiple touchpoints with ease. 

Whether it’s buying online and picking up in-store, browsing products on a mobile app, or engaging with a brand on social media, it ensures a frictionless experience for customers regardless of their preferred channel.

4. Real-time Inventory Visibility

Inventory management is a critical aspect of retail operations, and a lack of visibility into inventory levels leads to stockouts, overstocking, and lost sales opportunities. Its solutions provide retailers with real-time visibility into their inventory across all channels and locations.

Enabling them to optimize inventory levels, minimize stockouts, and fulfill orders more efficiently. This not only improves customer satisfaction by ensuring product availability but also helps retailers reduce carrying costs and improve inventory turnover rates.

ETP’s Unified Commerce Platform gives you a single, clear view of everything you have in stock across all your sales channels. No more scrambling to find the right product. The Unified Inventory Management System keeps everything organized to ensure you have the right items available at the right place and time, every time.

5. Data-Driven Insights and Decision-making

Its platforms generate a wealth of data from various customer interactions, transactions, and touchpoints, providing retailers with valuable insights into consumer behavior, market trends, and business performance. By leveraging advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, retailers gain actionable insights that drive informed decision-making and strategic planning. 

Whether it’s identifying emerging trends, forecasting demand, or segmenting customers for targeted marketing campaigns, it empowers retailers to harness the power of data to drive growth and profitability.

In conclusion, it represents a paradigm shift in retailing, offering retailers a powerful and flexible platform. ETP offers an advanced Unified Commerce Strategy that empowers retailers to deliver seamless omnichannel experiences, streamline operations, and drive business growth. 

With a focus on enhancing the customer experience, increasing operational efficiency, and leveraging data-driven insights, ETP helps retailers stay ahead of the curve in today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape. By partnering with ETP, retailers unlock the full potential of unified commerce and achieve sustained success in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The Future of Stores: Driving Bigger Baskets with Smart Retail Solutions

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

 

Did you know the first product to be barcode scanned was a pack of Wrigley chewing gum at an Ohio supermarket in 1974? Fascinating, isn’t it? This changed the retail game forever. As revolutionary as it sounds, this transformed the way people shop. Barcodes not only help business owners track their stocks but also help in quicker checkout processes for customers.

From the invention of the cash register in 1883 to the digital age of online shopping, we have come a long way. Over the years, technologies have made business owners’ lives easy as well as hugely influenced consumer’s choices and habits. This has only encouraged businesses to keep up with the technologies. The faster the technologies, the more sophisticated the customer’s behavior.

Online shopping has taken the retail world by storm due to the conveniences and tailored shopping experiences, it offers its customers. However, shoppers still like to visit a brick-and-mortar retail store to experience the product or services closely. This has further encouraged retail stores to optimize their in-store customer experiences using smart retail technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, the Internet of Things, robotics, and other latest technologies. Before diving deep into smart retail technology, let us take you through the basics. What exactly is smart retail technology?

 

What is smart retail?

A smart retail is nothing but a store that has integrated advanced digital technologies including smart self-checkout systems, smart inventory management, smart carts, and smart mirrors and shelves; into the traditional retail store. This next-generation technology helps deepen the interaction between customers and the shops.

 

How do smart retail solutions help store owners and shoppers?

  • Creates a customer portfolio by capturing visitors’ data more precisely
  • Ensures stable income and traffic by bringing back customers with easy-to-navigate and interactive stores
  • Enable smooth operations with advanced inventory and client management systems
  • Avoids task overload by automating the duties saving a great of shop owners’ time
  • Helps businesses stay ahead of their competitors who still using traditional retail ultimately winning the market

 

Smart retail technologies that will define the store of the future

  • Internet of Things (IoT) can collect real-time data which can be used to monitor inventory levels, consumer movement tracking and shopping patterns, etc
  • AI & ML can analyze the collected data to customize marketing efforts, enhance inventory management and pricing strategies
  • Mobile apps give customers access to offers, discounts, and recommendations
  • AR & VR allows immersive shopping experiences for customers
  • Beacon technology can be used to send offers & location-based notifications to customers’ smartphones who are in-store
  • Big Data Analyticsallows to analyze huge data collected from different sources to make data-driven decisions
  • Robotics and automationcan help shelves restock, handle warehouse inventory, and assist customers with basic inquiries

 

What are some applications of smart retail technology?

Smart mirrors:  Acts as navigation, information & advertising board, and advanced fitting space. It can help store visitors try on clothes and accessories and will also allow them to visualize more products, and choose colour variations in different weather settings.

 

Virtual fitting space: Allows visitors to choose items without leaving the fitting rooms by contacting the consultants through a smart mirror in the fitting room.

Smart shelves: Help staff track the item’s availability, misplacement, and theft attempts. Moreover, it will help customers find the right product size and colour.

Interactive kiosks: Self-service kiosks where customer can order and pay for their product. Other kinds of kiosks are information and interactive kiosks where visitors can find any product or information about the shops and 3D maps of shopping locations.

Real-time inventory: Helps business owner keep track of their stock in real-time and ultimately take control of their stocks. This is a way to enhance customer experience and they hate to see their desired product go out of stock.

Smart carts: A tablet that will convert the cart into a smart cart. These carts can track products bought and tailor offers based on the data. Moreover, they also allow visitors to make payments from the cart without standing in a queue.

 

What does the future hold?

Retail stores are keen to adopt smart retail solutions and their interest has been increasing rapidly over the last few years. Whether it is to transform their customer shopping experience or to provide a personalized and immersive service, businesses need to keep up with the latest technologies if they want to bridge the gap between online and offline retail.