Supply Chain Management

Online shopping has been less impacted from recessionary pressures and has continued showing upward growth. While online shoppers take quick and often impulse decisions, there has been a marked increase in shopping cart abandonment due to uneven user experience. This trend has been largely attributed to a slow and cumbersome checkout processes. In crafting the right shopping experience, retailers are caught between speed and efficiency of check-out process on one end and the need to have accurate inventory picture at the other, with this picture sourced from back-end supply chain applications on a near real-time basis. In this video blog, I share an easy-to-implement approach to front-end inventory visibility by striking a balance between website performance and accurate fulfillment using item/inventory classification principles coupled with inventory synchronization rules. I also talk about a differentiated inventory visibility strategy through which one can do away with the need to maintain inventory positions for 100% of the catalog. The complete paper on this paper was published by Manufacturing & Logistics IT and can be read here