Inventory visibility impacts every area of your supply chain – from profit margins and fulfillment speed to customer satisfaction. Accurate, real-time inventory visibility enables businesses to optimize stock, reduce carrying costs and meet increasing customer expectations.
Rising Consumer Expectations
As consumer expectations and requirements continue to increase, the need for real-time visibility and access to product and customer information has grown exponentially. Consumers have come to expect accurate delivery forecasts, flexible pickup and delivery options and fast shipments. Late deliveries or incorrect shipments may result in consumers abandoning a brand.
Supply chain leaders are turning to fulfillment tools offering real-time inventory visibility to monitor stock levels across all channels. These tools also have features such as BOPIS, ship-from-store and accurate delivery estimates, which are essential for any business that wants to keep up with the competition.
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Why Inventory Visibility Matters in the Supply Chain
Inventory costs are continuing to rise, yet many retailers and distributors still lack a clear view of stock across warehouses, suppliers, stores and transit. The result is missed sales, overstock and poor customer satisfaction. Inventory visibility is the key to solving these challenges.
Inventory Visibility Challenges
Monitoring inventory levels can be challenging for multichannel retailers and companies with multiple branches. Limited supplier visibility, data silos caused by disconnected systems and poor demand forecasting tools can all lead to outdated or inaccurate data. A good order management system can mitigate many of these challenges.
Disconnected Systems
Legacy systems with poor or no integration can make it difficult to track stock as it moves through the supply chain.
Attempts to manually reconcile stock levels can lead to errors, duplicated tasks and outdated information, impairing decision-making ability.
Manual Tracking
Paper-based or manual spreadsheet inventory tracking is time-consuming and error-prone. Attempts to reduce or eliminate these errors can slow down fulfillment speed, create duplicate work and make it difficult or almost impossible to scale warehouse operations.
Uncaught errors can have a ripple effect, and determining the source of the error at a later date can be challenging.
Limited Supplier Visibility
A lack of insight into supplier inventory levels and production schedules can lead to delayed shipments and product shortages. Integrating systems can be difficult, especially if the supplier or retailer uses legacy software.
Collaborating with suppliers to share data can minimize disruptions and improve transparency, improving the experience for the retailer, supplier and customer.
Inaccurate Demand Forecasting
Demand forecasting models rely on real-time sales and market data to predict demand and optimize inventory planning. When done well, this maximizes stock turnover. Outdated or incomplete information about stock levels makes demand forecasting much more difficult and could lead to stockouts or overstocks.
Real-Time Inventory Visibility Across Channels
Real-time retail — the ability to instantly identify the customer and gather, analyze and disseminate customer, product, pricing and inventory data across channels — is imperative to improving customer engagement. Without real-time data, any information provided internally and externally risks being inaccurate and out of context.
It is impossible to accurately manage inventory across the supply chain without real-time enterprise inventory visibility. Many organizations track inventory from the past, rather than in real-time. Having access to information in real time improves the customer experience.
Companies that leverage a real-time unified commerce platform can access all inventory available to promise (ATP) across the retail enterprise in real-time (stores, distribution centers, suppliers, and third-party logistics providers). This improved visibility enables smarter inventory replenishment, better customer service and optimized product routing between stores, warehouses and distribution points.
How enVista Can Help
Optimizing inventory management is an impactful way for retailers to improve their bottom line. enVista’s inventory visibility and optimization consulting services help retailers maximize customer satisfaction and increase their efficiency. We examine each part of your supply chain to find ways to improve your operations. Elevate your retail operations today. Speak with an expert to learn more about enVista’s inventory optimization services.
