What is an Omni-channel business?
An omni-channel business is one that provides its customers various ways of buying its products and services. The purchase can be made through an ecommerce website or by placing an order over a telephone or by simply walking into the brick-and-mortar store and picking up the product of your choice. With the increasing competition in the retail industry most enterprises across the developed and the developing world are now considering going omni-channel. It is an effective way to ensure that you don't lose out on your existing customers and that the new age tech savvy customer doesn't give you a skip.
Why visibility of inventory is important to serve customers in an omni-channel business?
When a customer decides to buy an item from your e-store/website etc he needs to know by when can he get it delivered. Also if an item is not available currently he likes to know by when it will be made available.
Often stores that have a Warehouse management system get their inventory replenished in batches. The only visibility that they have is within the store/warehouse. This often leads to a business either not having the right clarity to provide the correct timings to the customer or it providing a sizably high time. In order to be able to provide the shortest time by which the item will be made available, the business needs to have a clear visibility of the inventory lying in the store, in the DC, in the manufacturing location and also in-transit.
How can Oracle logfire prevent loss of sales and customers in an Omni-channel business?
Oracle logfire has a comprehensive approach to the warehouse management system. It keeps a track of all inbound and outbound orders destined to the DC, the stores and any other fulfilment centers in the supply chain. On the basis of this information logfire can clearly tell the business representative at the POS by when the item can be made available to him. Once the customer is apprised of the same his chances of going to a different business/store to buy the same item comes down sizably.
What kind of an End to end visibility is obtained using logfire?
1) The system captures the actual P.O.s and DC replenishment orders to get visibility into expected future shipments and the dates of arrival.
2) System also captures the inbound shipments from the suppliers that provides the inventory.
3) The system manages the outbound transportation to the store from the DC, and also the receiving and managing of the goods in the back of the store.
4) Based on the real time data captured, the system maintains accurate inventory information pertaining to each stock-location from where fulfilment can be done. It also understands which inventory is on the way towards these locations and also when will it arrive. Hence it becomes possible for the business to tell the customer exactly about when the item will be made available to him.
Additionally like any other new age WMS, the system also manages the replenishment of inventory to the sales floor, and also the returns and reverse logistics to a store, a DC, or to the supplier.
Why Infosys is the ideal choice for an Oracle logfire powered Warehouse management system?
Being a diamond partner of oracle for cloud implementation infosys brings to the table a robust expertise of implementing all of Oracle products.
Oracle practice of Infosys comes with the capability of not just deploying a warehouse management system but also Transportation management & Trade management systems which can be exploited to make the customer's business optimized for movement of inventory and also trade-compliant in case of any international orders.
Written by: Ravikiran Khobragade & Mohammad Talat