With lockdowns and a general caution towards confined spaces outside one’s own bubble, many retail franchises have wisely adopted the consumer convenience of online shopping with click and collect and click and delivery. This helped those vulnerable or weary of the risk of coronavirus to stay out of harm’s way and keep doing their shopping; and allowed retailers on the other hand to maintain customer loyalty and perhaps even grow their customer base from competitors who have not yet adopted a comprehensive ecommerce strategy including click and delivery.
While such conveniences are great for consumers, offering omni-channel ecommerce is not always so convenient for retailers. It’s one thing to offer a nice user interface to customers, the biggest part of the equation is how to actually fulfil those customer orders efficiently while maintaining visibility of stock levels across all branches. This is where modern day warehousing tools such as warehouse management system (WMS) software is a game changer.
To fulfil orders, staff no longer have to wait for manual work allocations to begin picking orders from the retail floor. Instead, Korber WMS RETAILvantage software (formerly HighJump Retail Advantage) relieves supervisors of this responsibility by providing system directed picking work flows - removing any sales order data entry errors and the potential for inaccurate picking and incorrect orders being dispatched. This in turn avoids customer dissatisfaction from receiving a wrong order and costly returns.
But what about visibility? How do I know, among the thousands of stock items, how much of each stock item exists for any given branch and across multiple branches? To provide visibility, typical of a modern day WMS, RETAILvantage treats all branches logically as part of a large warehouse/DC with each stock item shelf location barcoded. When an item is picked by staff to fulfil an order (e.g. for ecommerce click and collect or click and delivery), that stock item is decremented from the “shelf location” in the WMS software reducing stock levels. Moreover, when instore customers make a purchase, the product is decremented at point of sale. In both cases, visibility of stock levels and notice for timely replenishment for that store and across all branches is available to ensure you can always fulfil demand.
Other benefits of RETAILvantage include:
Cycle counting and inventory adjustment controls to maintain store inventory accuracy
A single pool of inventory per product to which all channels have access, and fulfilment prioritization rules among online, home delivery, store requirements and wholesale orders
Configurable, value-added services management for activities such as labelling, kitting and assembly to support efficient work queue control and monitoring
Store receipt processing with support for ASN and PO receipt processes with directed put-away for streamlined work flow.
To find out more about how your retail franchise can adopt the efficiencies and visibility commonly provided by modern day WMS through Korber’s RETAILvantage watch the video.