Supply Chain Management

Mobile Payment Options

In his previous blog, my colleague Amit Ambekar had talked about various payment types such as Cash on Delivery, Layaway and Buy Now Pay Later. Another payment method which is gaining the importance of late is Mobile Payments. A mobile payment is any payment where a mobile phone is used to initiate, authorize and confirm payments. The widespread uses of electronic commerce and ubiquitous mobile devices have made mobile payments an interesting alternative method of payment for customers and merchants. Currently mobile payments are prevalent in 5 forms -m-wallet, m-banking, contactless card systems, online payment systems, and carrier billing.

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Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Has Best of Breed WMS Won the Race?

It is the time of the year when you look back at the predications that were made and how they turned out. I am just going to look at a prediction that was made a while back. In 2006 the analyst community predicted that gap between the Best of Breed (BOB) WMS and ERP WMS has narrowed significantly and it was just matter of time before the ERP vendors caught up with the BOB vendors (1). Today after 5 years the gap still exists (if not widened) and BOB WMS vendors continue to lead the race.

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Posted by Pragash Muthukumar at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Real Headline for the 2011 Holiday Buying Season- Need for Balancing Retailer Online and Fulfillment Process Investments

Guest Post by

Bob Ferrari, the Founder and Executive Editor of the Supply Chain Matters Blog, and a periodic guest blogger on the Infosys Supply Chain Management blog.

In late November Supply Chain Matters penned a guest commentary on the Infosys Supply Chain Management blog that outlined our belief that retailers should anticipate different supply chain fulfillment capabilities for the upcoming 2011 holiday buying season. Because of the reality of a rather challenging year of supply chain disruptions in 2011, we warned on the possibility of retailers not having the most popular and desired products the consumer wanted because suppliers would fall short of meeting holiday demand spikes. We further noted that the upcoming 2011 holiday buying season would once again drive home the premise that MCO and responsive supply chain inventory management are often the best complement to effective multi-channel and online commerce plans.

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Posted by Bob Ferrari at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Scheduling 'Order Release Process' Intelligently

A standard retail sales order goes through four main processes during its fulfillment cycle. They are order sourcing, order scheduling, order release and finally order shipping & delivery. Order sourcing process finds the optimal node from which order can be sourced; whereas scheduling determines when the order can be shipped or delivered. Order release process releases the order to warehouse management application in order to allow its processing in warehouse. In other words, order release process transfers order control from order management system to warehouse management system. Hence, timing the release process astutely, is extremely important. A mistimed release process can lead to undesirable outcomes and may prevent realization full OMS implementation benefits. Today, I would like to share one such experience with you...

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Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Fulfillment Options - Recent Trends

Typically, retailers have provided their customers a standard set of fulfillment options i.e. the different ways in which the order could be delivered to the customer. E.g.: Standard Delivery (2-5 day delivery), Expedited (Next day delivery), Store Pickup etc.

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Posted by Amit Ambekar at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Delivering the Goods in Online Grocery Business

A number of grocery retailers are enthusiastically embracing online initiatives. Some enable a buy-online-in-store-pickup approach while a few expand their reach to include home deliveries and the usage of dark stores. But one look at the online grocery landscape reveals that a successful strategy is not really linked to any of these.

In a recent blog on Supply Chain Matters, I lay out the true platform for successful adoption of online operations by grocery retailers. I argue that what is needed is an understanding of linkages across the true view of consumer desires, alignment of retail grocers, and perspective of solution providers. The entire blog can be accessed here.

Posted by Arun Kumar at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fraud vs Customer Centricity - III

In my earlier posts Part - I here and Part - II here, I discussed about how we could utilise the features provided by payment gateways intelligently to reduce the exposure against credit card failures.In addition to that, another key area in the battle towards reducing exposure against non-payment is the optimisation of the Order Lifecycle itself.A good business process should always have control points and a proper feedback loop. This applies to the Order Lifecycle too.Let me elucidate.

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Posted by Prasad Acharya at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Layaway and Buy Now Pay Later Payment Options!

In my previous blog, I had talked about the Cash on Delivery payment option. A couple of other payment options, which were in vogue earlier and are now making a comeback due to the recession, are Layaway and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL).

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Posted by Amit Ambekar at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Retailer Multi-Channel Operations Capabilities Get an Early Test in the 2011 Holiday Buying Season

Guest Post by

Bob Ferrari, Founder and Executive editor of the Supply Chain Matters blog

Today is Cyber Monday and we provide our first update to our previous commentary on how retailer multi-channel operations (MCO) capabilities will be challenged in the current 2011 holiday buying season. We noted previously that while overall holiday shopping sales will not increase significantly overall, the real story will be reflected on how both online and physical retailers capture the interests and buying motivations of far more tech-savvy and mobile empowered consumers.

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Posted by Bob Ferrari at 5:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Factors Influencing Delivery Address Amendment

Sometime in 2005, I had ordered a birthday gift hamper for my friend from one of the web based retailer in US, to be delivered on her birthday, which happened to be a couple of week later. When I placed the order, my friend was staying in Chicago, so I chose Chicago as delivery location. However, during that two-week time frame she moved to New York. Learning this, I thought of delivering gift to her New York address. So when I called customer service executive of online retailer to change the delivery address of my order, I was surprised to learn that I cannot change delivery address my order. Instead, I had to cancel the existing order and place a new one, if I wanted my gift to be delivered to another address. Unaware of supply chain complexities involved in changing delivery address of customer order, I was wondering what a big deal changing delivery address is. Is it really difficult for retailer to provide option of changing delivery address? What are the various system requirements to carry out this process? Let's discuss it...

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Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 3:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)