Supply Chain Management

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.

Continue reading "Mobile Payment Options" »

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

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.

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

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

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...

Continue reading "Scheduling 'Order Release Process' Intelligently" »

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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.

Continue reading "Fulfillment Options - Recent Trends" »

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

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.

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Continue reading "Fraud vs Customer Centricity - III" »

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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).

Continue reading "Layaway and Buy Now Pay Later Payment Options!" »

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

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.

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

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

Continue reading "Factors Influencing Delivery Address Amendment" »

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

Guest Post By
Bob Ferrari, Executive Editor, Supply Chain Matters blog

Just about a year ago,I penned a guest posting on the Infosys Supply Chain Management blog that commented on the pending 2010 holiday buying season and how consumers would test retailer multi-channel operations (MCO) and synchronization. In our commentary, we cited three trends that would manifest themselves in 2010, namely.
1.Far more value-oriented shoppers would embrace just-in-time shopping techniques, balancing perceived best price with product availability.
2.A more empowered consumer who would gain the information advantage by deeper utilization of online shopping and research tools.
3.The state of product demand planning and inventory management among retailers becoming more advanced.

Continue reading "The Upcoming 2011 Holiday Buying Season will again Test Retailer MCO and Supply Chain Capabilities" »

Posted by Bob Ferrari at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Retail order management is a relatively new concept. Till late nineties, majority of the retailers depended on supermarkets for selling various goods. Since, there was only one channel of selling, most of the retailers managed their IT needs by having some home grown applications which were able to perform very basic processes. Proliferation of computer technology and arrival of internet have completely transformed retail industry in the last decade. Development of multi-channel commerce, has helped retailers to sell their goods via internet, call centers, mobiles etc. Number of orders delivered to customers' home is ever increasing and now almost all online retailers have home delivery option.

Continue reading "Will "Profitable To Promise" be Viable In Retail Industry ??" »

Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Grocery segment is one of the most challenging sectors of the retail market today. Some of the reasons why an increasing number of consumers buy groceries online are convenience of shopping and / or Home delivery of purchased items. Growing interest by consumers to buy grocery online; has made retailers to launch internet based grocery selling channel. Since, almost all big retailers have entered into online selling, the competition has increased many fold. Seating at home, customer can browse through different web-sites to get the best deal in terms of price. Since groceries come under commodity segment, the only way retailers can attract customers is, by the services they offer to customers. In short, retailers are trying to attract customers by their method of order fulfillment and delivery.

Continue reading "Order Fulfillment From The Dark Stores" »

Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cash on Delivery (COD) as a payment option has existed for a long time, but is fast becoming a popular payment option in some countries such as India. A customer places an order online and chooses the COD option. The order is fulfilled and the customer makes the payment in cash at the time of delivery.

Continue reading "The 'Cash on Delivery' Payment Option!" »

Posted by Amit Ambekar at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, I, along with a couple of my team members, had the opportunity to present the progress on our Distributed Order Management (DOM) solution to Kris, our Executive Co-Chairman (and CEO till last month). Kris's objective was to understand the solution innovation in what we have done - i.e, building a Reference Implementation on the foundations of Sterling Commerce's base DOM product offering.

This Reference Implementation has been our answer to clients increasing need to get onto the Multi-Channel Commerce (MCC) bandwagon. We've had some good successes of late focusing on the merits of starting off the blocks with a reference implementation in an agile-like manner (I use such terms carefully!) as against blue-sky sessions with a bunch of assorted business analysts and their managers with highly varying interest levels with the finished product looking nothing like what each person there had envisaged in his/her mind.

Continue reading "Multi-Channel Commerce: Not viral yet, but definitely diffusing" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We are familiar with the subtle and distinct shifts in item handling and pack sizes as products move from suppliers to customers in a retail supply chain. For example, apparel sourced from India or footwear from China is packed in boxes and loaded on to shipping containers. Subsequently, these boxes move on trailers to warehouses from where they make their way to retail outlets or directly into customer homes. While I acknowledge the complexities in this supply chain, I would also argue that there exists significant predictability. Shipments are ordered in container sizes, suppliers are paid for units purchased, items are stored inside boxes for easy transportation, and at the 'last mile', items are sold as discrete units.  Contrast this with an industry that is traditionally more fragmented, has elaborate storage conditions, is prone to spoilage, and yet is attempting a game-changing attempt in its push online. This blog is about the changing dynamics within retail grocery in general, and catch weight items in particular.

Continue reading "Catch Me If You Can.... the continuing evolution of catch weight items" »

Posted by Arun Kumar at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Retail industry is highly competitive industry. With the advent of multi-channel commerce competition is stronger than ever. Multi-channel order fulfillment has provided retailers a platform to stay competitive. However, keeping fraudulent transactions in control has become one of the biggest challenges in recent past. Retailers are facing increasing pressure to protect customer data and build customer loyalty. Customers want to be confident that their credit information is safe and that business computer systems are reliable. Recent data security breaches have compromised tens of millions of customers' financial records. Hence, credit card and payment companies have standardized on Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements to protect data, control access, and defend against cyber-attacks. All retailers who want to process credit card information must adhere to these standards. Thus, PCI DSS is a collection of rules that promote IT security processes and aims to reduce financial fraud through heightened network security capabilities of all organizations processing payment card information.

Continue reading "PCI Compliance - An Expenditure or Investment ?" »

Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my earlier post, I discussed the need to manage fraud separate from managing defaults while charging the Customer's card.

Generally, the strategy to charge the Customers' card can be based on two parameters. One is to utilise the various features provided by payment gateways intelligently and the second would be the modelling of the Order Management process itself to minimise exposure.

I will cover the first part in this post.

Continue reading "Fraud vs Customer Centricity - II" »

Posted by Prasad Acharya at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the first part of this blog, I had described some of the differences in the order management /fulfillment process for grocery (food) retailers' vis-à-vis non-food products and also highlighted the opportunities and challenges faced by retailers. I will continue the discussion below.

Continue reading "Order management solutions for the grocery business - Part 2" »

Posted by Amit Ambekar at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to work on an order management solution implementation for a grocery (food) retailer. I realized that the order management /fulfillment process for food presents its own set of opportunities and challenges to the retailer when compared to the same process for non-food products. I will highlight some of the differences in the processes for food and non-food products below.

Continue reading "Order management solutions for the grocery business - Part 1" »

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Continue reading "Going Lean and Staying Agile" »

Posted by Arun Kumar at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Non-perishable segment is one of the most dynamic and competitive segments of the retail industry. Even in the current challenging economic environment retailers continue to strengthen their customer propositions by investing in multi-channel initiatives, expanding choice, developing both ranges and services, enhancing product presentation in stores and online and delivering value to the customer. These initiatives have objectives of building successful businesses that bring unrivalled convenience and value to customers' everyday lives, whether shopping at home or on the move, and, for IT, reducing the number of applications by a factor of 3 or 4. Fragmented custom build systems are becoming barriers to the growth. The limitations of such systems are driving retailers to search for a streamlined, end to end order management solution that will play a pivotal role in transforming their business.

Continue reading "5 Precursors of An Obsolete OMS" »

Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my current engagement at a large retailer in the UK, I came across the seemingly paradoxical requirements between the Fraud Management team and the Business team. This has become an almost common theme across the various Multi-channel Order Management implementations that I have been involved in.

Continue reading "Fraud vs Customer Centricity - I" »

Posted by Prasad Acharya at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Growing significance of Drop Ship Business Model Part II" »

Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Growing Significance of Drop Ship Fulfillment Model" »

Posted by Pankaj Sudhakar Patil at 5:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "HazMat in SCM Needs to Worry About New Tech Impositions!" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The two acronyms above are anagrams of each other.

When expanded into Architecture Driven Development and Development Driven Architecture, these appear to be antonyms.

No, this is not a word play blog entry; it is about the challenges faced by organizations forced out of organic growth into embarking on large transformational programs. IT teams in such organizations face the  challenge of altering their approach to architecture and development.

Continue reading "ADD v/s DDA" »

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Continue reading "Beyond the bells and into what matters...." »

Posted by Arun Kumar at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was keenly looking forward to IBM Impact this year on behalf of the SCM practice due to the formal induction of Sterling Commerce into the IBM camp and more so, to understand what exactly was the much talked about "Smarter Commerce" theme. Putting supply chain into a Websphere event meant limited attention and focus especially in the daily key note sessions, but we more than made up via some interesting discussions across the board, especially with senior leaders from IBM, both from WW sales team as well as the product management team.

Continue reading "Talking Smarter Commerce at IBM Impact" »

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Sometime ago, I had visited a warehouse in New Jersey which took me by surprise. From the outside it looked like a long barrack with a large number of dock doors and from the inside, it was a lot strange. There were no aisles, bays, levels or locations for storing goods. Instead there was a conveyer system that was used to receive goods from the receiving dock door and to move them to a work area where the pallets were de-palletized. The resulting cartons were then loaded into smaller trailers stationed at the shipping dock doors. This was not a warehouse in the true sense, but what warehousing science would call it a 'Crossdock Warehouse'.

Continue reading "Crossdock Warehouse - What drives its necessity?" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 5:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous post, I outlined how warehouses must evolve to drive revenues. Let us consider a new dimension in this post on how warehousing concepts are spilling beyond distribution centers in today's buy-online-pick-anywhere-deliver-anywhere world.

Continue reading "DC-lite strategies in today's stores?" »

Posted by Arun Kumar at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just before boarding the flight to US for IBM Pulse, Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters had a media interview with me. While the primary objective was to discuss about the EAM sector and what we plan to showcase at Pulse, conversation invariably moved over to a broader supply chain fabric.

Last year, for those who remember, as part of my SCM predictions for 2010, I had stressed on the need for convergence and integration across supply chain. For me, this was achieved through

• Integrating disparate functions (forecasting with procurement, transportation with warehousing and work management with inventory)
• Near real-time visibility across the supply chain (ideally - if not, at least cutting across business functions), via an alert and event management framework

This year, with SCM being in greater focus as a more visible partner in organizational strategy, my view was on how supply chain can be the driver for

• growth (revenue impact)
• cost (profit impact) and
• differentiation (competitve strategy impact)

These are sometimes achieved through specific business functions, for eg: indirect procurement program focus on cost management while anything on the sell-side whether its enhanced B2B commerce features or store inventory visibility would drive revenues. How would you use supply chain to differentiate your organization vis-a-vis the competition - at the customer-side, supplier-side and partner-side?

More on my interview with Bob here: http://www.theferrarigroup.com/supply-chain-matters/2011/03/02/smarter-asset-management-interview-with-gopi-krishnan-of-infosys-technologies-part-two/

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Word or Notepad" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of late, via market hearsay, some level of intelligence gathering and straightforward google search, I've been trying to read up and wisen up on IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative. On first look, this may sound like another one of those attempts to prefix the word "smarter" with just about everything, but coming from an organization which has taken up the task for making the planet itself smarter, I was intrigued as to how the acquired companies (specifically Sterling Commerce) would stack up in this list.

Here's some webview on this:

Continue reading "Smarter Commerce means more SCM than before!" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago, we were helping our clients figure out the landscape across the various packages they are implementing in their Ecommerce space. One of the main issues that was covered during this exercise was the seeming overlap of functionalities between the Order Capture Ecomm suite and the Order Management suite.

I have been asked this by multiple people with slight nuances at various client sites over the last two years.

In a pure Multi-channel solution, the Order Management layer is primarily tasked with consolidating demand (Customer Orders) utilising a consolidated inventory picture (Available To Promise) and fulfillment capability (Sourcing). But this vision tends to stay idealistic in most implementations that I have seen with some 'short-cuts' and 'work arounds' being put in place for a variety of reasons.

Continue reading "Are pure Order Management Systems on their way out?" »

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Continue reading "Cloud computing in multi channel commerce... Is it really taking off? " »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 7:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Pre-customized Distributed Order Management Solution for Retailers" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day, a colleague of mine sent me the brochure of Oracle's fresh pitch to the multi-channel world titled "Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration - The New Standard for Order Capture and Fulfillment". While the DOO terminology is a slight tweak on the more popular Distributed Order Management (DOM), I read through and noticed a fundamental difference in the pitching of the offering. The text goes thus:

Continue reading "Distributed Order Orchestration implies channel reduction?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently, our deliberations with a leading retailer brought to focus a number of process harmonization challenges that it faces across product categories, GEOs and IT systems. These were on account of diverse country-specific processes, multiple WMS systems, lack of unified supply chain metrics, overlapping/conflicting integration requirements, and varied fulfillment strategies. Another discussion with a different retailer that had gone a step further to implement warehouse efficiency & workforce productivity standards at stores also revealed similar issues.

Continue reading "The Distribution Center - a look ahead" »

Posted by Arun Kumar at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by

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

Last February, I contributed a guest commentary on the Infosys Supply Chain Management Blog reflecting on last year's 2009 holiday buying season. The focus of that posting was on the implications of a far more sophisticated consumer on retailer capabilities in multi-channel commerce (MCC) and multi-channel operations (MCO).  My primary message was that a seamless customer experience starts and ends with deployed supply chain capabilities supporting an MCO process framework.  I believe that in the coming weeks and months, MCO will take on increased dependencies on downstream suppliers and the leveraged use of advanced technology, with broader implications for joint business success.

Continue reading "The Upcoming Holiday Buying Season Will Test Retailer Multi-Channel Operations and Synchronization" »

Posted by Bob Ferrari at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this blog I would try to put forth my understanding on the point as to why Distributed Order management is deeply rooted within the supply chain function and why to me it turns out to be a founding member of the SCM club.My thought process strated here.  This is an attempt to draw parallels or bring out the core SCM areas Order Management addresses and also talk about few classic supply chain concepts from which the OMS way of problem solving has emanated from. I believe manufacturing is the genesis of all Supply Chains so excuse me if my points/cues are skewed and towards planning in Manufacturing.

Continue reading "Order Management: Deeply rooted in Supply Chain " »

Posted by Dawn Mathew Varghese at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "When does OMS get a seat at the Supply Chain Club?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Staying OOB - Insights" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 1:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Staying OOB" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As you are aware, I spoke in a videocast around multi channel strategy in August this year with Dan Gilmore, Chief Editor of Supply Chain Digest magazine. The On-Demand video cast can be viewed here.It seems that this videocast has struck a chord with a lot of readers/viewers and I have received overwhelming response around the same. I have received many follow up questions, some of which I spoke about briefly in the question and answer session at the end of the videocast.

Two key questions which keep coming up are around the need for a distributed order management solution (DOMS) to enable this multi channel commerce strategy and the degree of technical complexity in typical implementations.

Continue reading "Multi Channel Commerce - A Review" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Start line - global order management solution" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of late, my interactions with regional and global business community, colleagues and ex-colleagues bring out immense interest in the next-gen Platform BPO solutions. While some speak about Cloud computing and some talk about SaaS, etc., many who prefer looking at Business relatively holistically, combining people, process and Technology aspects together, are using this term 'Platform BPO' frequently - they don't mind calling it Business Platform summarily, this is my observation.

Continue reading "Why Centralized Inventory Data is critical for effective Order Management Platform" »

Posted by Tapas Chattopadhyay at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the last of my blogs for the videocast discussion with Dan Gilmore, Chief Editor of Supply Chain Digest. The details of the videocast on August 17th are available at http://www.sctvchannel.com/Videocast_Fulfilling_Multi_Channel_Commerce.php.

A critical difference between Multi Channel Operations (MCO) and Multi Channel Commerce (MCC) is in the handling of financial data. Most retailers have established well defined business processes for channel specific financial accounting. For e.g. the online and catalog channels post inventory, sales and payment settlement into systems that inherently recognize the delayed fulfillment of orders i.e. posting occurs when the order is shipped and not when it is created. Store POS transactions however post almost immediately as the customer typically walks out with the product. These processes and systems which are very disparate across channels, work very well in channel isolation. However when these channels cross like when a customer pays for a product in store but it gets fulfilled later from an online DC, a whole bunch of accounting problems arise.

 
Another related issue is around the potential for conflict amongst channel stakeholders with respect to matters that relate to incentives and metrics. If a customer places an order online, but picks up from the store, which channel gets the credit for this sale and in what proportion? How are the revenues split across the channels involved? Either of these channels may get the credit completely or it could be a model sharing credit in some predetermined proportion. Ground rules to handle such issues need to be a part of the retailer's MCI strategy. MCC is really an organization-wide initiative with all the channels involved having a share and claiming a stake in the investments as well as the outcome.

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the lead up to my videocast on multi channel strategy, I wanted to illustrate the difference between multi channel operations and multi channel commerce through the example of inventory management. One of the major justifications for cross channel investments is improving inventory utilization by making more of the inventory visible across the new sales channels. For e.g. this has translated into enabling in store pickup as a fulfillment option over the web. Another example is allowing special ordering of products like movies & music in stores (endless aisles).

I would classify these attempts as multi channel operations since they attempt to bring the best of fulfillment from a specific channel to make it available over other channels. It transcends into multi channel commerce when for e.g. store pickup is available as one of several fulfillment options when ordering online, over the phone, and in the store. Also even though the retailer may not have the product in a particular store, it moves it through its supply chain potentially consuming supplies reserved for other channels in order to enable customer pickup at their favorite store. The cherry on the cake is obviously if the customer can be promised an accurate date upfront at the time of ordering despite all these complications of fulfillment. One of the ways to achieve this - implementing a smart and configurable availability engine over the various inventory sources available at a retailer.

You can learn more about these differences between multi channel operations and multi channel strategy by viewing my videocast discussion with Dan Gilmore, Chief Editor of Supply Chain Digest. The details of the videocast on August 17th are available at http://www.sctvchannel.com/Videocast_Fulfilling_Multi_Channel_Commerce.php.

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the last decade, those of us in the retail domain have seen a wide proliferation of new channels for selling and fulfilling products. When viewed from the retailer perspective, it has translated into managing new channels such as print, mobile, email, online, catalog, store as well coordinating the fulfillment from drop ship vendors, wholesalers, warehouses, stores etc. On the customer side, they are more aware of all these opportunities to find, research and buy their products.

Being exposed to a multitude of channels, they also expect these cross channel experiences to be more seamless. Retailers have to not only develop strategies to efficiently manage these channels but also ensure they stay tuned to and meet customer expectations. This strategy of multi channel commerce (MCC) has at best remained a leap of faith so far.

This essential evaluation of current multi channel strategy and the improvements required to move towards multi channel commerce is the coverage topic of my videocast discussion  with Dan Gilmore, Chief Editor of Supply Chain Digest. The details of the videocast on August 17th are available at http://www.sctvchannel.com/Videocast_Fulfilling_Multi_Channel_Commerce.php. I also plan to blog here about some of the key points in the lead up to the videocast.

Continue reading "Fulfilling the Promise of Multi-Channel Commerce" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you ever thought of a location in a warehouse which has a physical pallet, but actually the location does not exist? Strange, isn't it? Well, let's dig into this.

A  few years back I had been to a country in the Far East to carry out business process study for multiple warehouses for a marine food processing plant. Here the raw material was mainly fish which were of all kinds of varieties; these would arrive in trucks and unload the lot in a sorting area where they would be segregated based on the weight and size. They were then placed in large steel containers and then putaway into a large cold storage at sub zero temperatures around under -40 degree Celsius.

Continue reading "Virtual Locations in a Warehouse" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Dennis Gaughan of Gartner in his blog dated 29-Jun-2010 wonders whether its time for corporations to rethink their enterprise applications portfolio strategy (http://blogs.gartner.com/dennis-gaughan/2010/06/29/is-it-time-to-rethink-your-enterprise-application-portfolio-strategy/). Well, I think organizations are thinking about it all the time, sometimes when they do their annual planning and are reminded of the morass in their application landscape and sometimes thanks to M&A (esp for financial institutions) forcing them to look at what to sunset and what to fold in.

Continue reading "Would SCM be a differentiator in your Apps Portfolio?" »

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Continue reading "Sell-side Supply Chain and the importance of User Experience" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the last few years I have noticed a change in the risk matrix associated with Sterling implementations. 3-4 years back the level of customization in Sterling implementations was higher. The level of available out of box functionality may have been a contributing factor, however the bigger driver was aligning the solution with business processes. I remember it used to be very difficult to get business teams to change their processes, resulting in costly customizations.

Since the downturn last year, I have noticed a change in this area. IT organizations are more confident about being able to get the business to agree to process changes to avoid costly customizations. Business users are more open to understand how they could change their processes to be able to benefit from faster and cheaper  implementations of required features. So why did this shift happen?

Continue reading "Business is ready, is IT?" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I met with Bob Ferrari at Sterling Customer Connect event in Dallas in late April of this year and we were exchanging thoughts on emerging themes and trends in the supply chain space especially in the context of the recent economic downturn.  It was quite an interesting and engaging interaction where we discussed a host of topics ranging from logistics to order management / fulfillment, supply chain planning and customer service. One of the key thoughts which we synchronized on was how customer service is becoming central to organizational thinking and how supply chain execution - especially reverse logistics- can play a central role in creating differentiation. In this blog I have outlined how reverse logistics can help create this differentiation.

The complete blog post is available on Supply Chain Matters blog here.

Posted by Atul Chandra Pandey at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Transforming Customer Experience - The "Outside In" View of Supply Chains" »

Posted by Richard Douglass at 5:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever since the IBM acquisition of Sterling Commerce (http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/31742.wss), the standard questions I get asked is essentially variations around the theme of suitability and impact on our practice - Wasn't this acquisition purely for the BIS B2B integration piece which suddenly gives IBM access to 18,000 customers? Was the SCM piece of Sterling Commerce some kind of an afterthought or collateral benefit, if you may? If at all, it would fit in, where would it be? And most importantly, what happens to Infosys next, being by far (by a few light years, if I may say so myself) the leading player in Sterling SCM package related services in the SI space?
Let's get to the last question first. 

Continue reading "Sterling Commerce folds into IBM - an Infy perspective" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 4:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year, eager, enterprising and wide-eyed management graduates join us at our Hyderabad campus, straight from B-school to the Enterprise Solutions Academy (ESA) for a 10-week boot-camp, at the end of which they get deployed in various cities across multiple enterprise packages to kick-off a career in enterprise solutions as Associate Consultants. This May, I was addressing and answering the queries of a set of folks slated to join the SCM practice. One question that caught my eye came was from someone who asked how come Distributed Order Management (from Sterling Commerce, naturally) was so hugely popular among retailers, but didn't cut it in other industry verticals.

Continue reading "Beyond Retail - whither goes Multi-Channel Commerce?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 4:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In my earlier post, I mentioned I was speaking at Sterling Commerce Customer Connection 2010. Well, the session was well attended and I met quite a few other retailers who were at different stages of their multichannel journey. I heard lots of viewpoints on the future of order management in retail.

One such discussion was with  a person I have known over the past few years and she owned business requirements definition for one of my previous engagements. The key points she raised were "Why is POS required? Why can't we store ALL orders in the same OMS that we store online orders?". What she was saying is that the register is old world. In this world of handhelds and iPads why do we drag the customer all the way to a register?

Continue reading "After Customer Connection 2010 - why do we need registers?" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year Sterling Commerce organizes Sterling Customer Connecion that is a gathering of Sterling Commerce's customers and partners across their various product lines. (Visit http://webapps.sterlingcommerce.com/connection10/home.php for more details).
I have attended the past few years focusing on their supply Chain Execution suite of products, around which I lead consulting and package implementation engagements for Infosys. It's also an occasion to meet old friends from Sterling Commerce and from different clients, and to hopefully start new friendships.
I will be speaking in one of the sessions there about a Multi-Channel OMS implementation for a leading specialty retailer. I was part of that implementation for two years and it was an interesting journey (more details about the session here) 

Continue reading "It's the implementation, silly..." »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Understanding what ROI a WMS can provide before deciding to get one implemented in the warehouse is the foremost exercise that needs to be carried out. You need to look at your current efficiency levels are and set expectations once a WMS is put in place.
Some question that are worth considering:

- Is your stock traceability accurate?
- Are there frequent miss-picks?
- Do you have excess manpower that is not utilized efficiently?
- Is the warehouse space efficiently utilized?   
- Is the right Material Handling Equipment(MHE)selected to picking? 
- Do you have a well defined inbound and outbound operational rules being followed?

If your answers to these questions are not overwhelming, well then you need to look at how a WMS would bring about increased level of performance in your warehouse.

Continue reading "WMS ROI - Points to Ponder" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I had a meeting with the Director of Loss Prevention at a leading retailer. I was giving him a brief walkthrough of the proposed payment processing process for the new OMS being designed for implementation. In course of discussion a few surprising statistics, on the extent of gift card fraud and how easily the scammers got away with it, prompted us to investigate possible loop holes in the whole gift card fulfillment and redemption process.

Continue reading "Fighting Gift Card Fraud" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Blog 3: Retail Customer Order Management Blog Series: Part 3 – Merchandizing" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "The State of Order Hubs – A Business Oriented Architecture" »

Posted by Richard Douglass at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a customer I have always been frustrated by the clutter created, and the effort required to manage my store sale receipts. More often than not, Murphy strikes, and I cannot seem to find the very same receipt on which a return/exchange needs to be made. Other than the frustrations that a customer like me has to go through in organizing/retaining store receipts, these receipts are also an environmental and procurement problem.

Continue reading "Do you really want the Paper Receipt …?" »

Posted by Sameer Prashar at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Most retailers have three primary channels: stores, catalog, and online. A catalog offers a great selection of products in a medium that customers are comfortable with and providing service through a contact center allows ample opportunity for cross-sells and up-sells. The online channel has even greater selection plus integration with social networks, user reviews, easy comparison shopping with other retailers and the convenience of shopping at convenience. The traditional brick and mortar stores let the customers handle and play with products, return items in person, carry them home with you that day and talk with a salesperson if they have questions. The advent of Mobile commerce and growth of the convergence phenomena across the digital world through 'augmented reality' and 'ubiquitous connectivity' has led to unique opportunities for retailers to leverage in developing another channel for commerce as well as enhance the capabilities of existing channels.

Continue reading "Augmented Reality and Multi Channel Retail- Unifying the Customer Touchpoints" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last month, Infosys got a call from Supply Chain Digest magazine, courtesy the editor-in-chief Dan Gilmore to air our views on the key trends for Supply Chain Management in 2010. Supply Chain Guru Predictions for 2010 published earlier this month covered a set of 5 other eminent folks from MIT, Gartner, Descartes and so on, so I was happy for the opportunity to be featured amongst these industry thought leaders.

As primarily a package supply chain enabler, I stuck to my knitting and covered my theme along two lines (a) Improving efficiencies in the back-end supply chain to reduce costs and (b) Enhancing end-customer experience by augmenting the front-end supply chain. People ask me where the relentless pressure to slay every efficiency killer would end up. What next after Multi-channel commerce, end2end procurement, green asset management... whither goes SCM end-state?

Continue reading "Supply Chain Predictions for 2010 - how far are we from our end-state vision?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "The Imperative for Retailers to Assess Multi-Channel Operations Capabilities as a Prelude to Multi-Channel Commerce" »

Posted by Guest Author at 5:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Retail Customer Order Management Blog Series: Part 2 – The Retail Order" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I currently consult across multiple clients. They all are retailers, in different segments. At one retailer, we are defining a roadmap for a order management solution. In the course of our discussions, a question keeps getting raised about the sale made in the store: Is that an order?

You walk into my store, you pick something up, want to buy it, take it to the register, pay for it and take it home. In this entire transaction, you interacted with my company. You took something out of my inventory and paid me cash. In retail lexicon, this would be called a sale. However, if you were a business, and sent me a purchase order, and I responded by creating a sales order and then shipped it to you and invoiced you, the sales order is what would be called a order.

So, a customer transaction in store is a sale, and a B2B transaction is obviously an order. What about an e-commerce B2C transaction? Other than the fact that the customer's ship to address, payment information, and bill to address is available with me, how is this different from a sale? Should I encourage my sale to grow up and become an order?

Continue reading "My sale wants to grow up and become an order" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 3:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Retail Customer Order Management Blog Series: Part 1 - An Introduction" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 5:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Multi Channel Order Management Go Live: How early should you plan Cutover/Rollout?" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sterling Commerce recently announced mobile applications for their Order Management application. Sterling Mobile Store Channel and Sterling Store Associate Mobile app for iPhone allow customers as well as business employees to search for products, place orders and track shipments through their iPhones. While discussing these new developments with business users at my current client, i tried to scribble down a wish list from a Retail Store manager's perspective. The expectations are beginning to go beyond the traditional find inventory, find store and place order.

Continue reading "Multi Channel Commerce & Mobile Apps - Wishlist 2010" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s the beginning of the year and our campus here at Bangalore is abuzz with client visits, with sometimes the Bangalore campus alone hosting 4-5 client visits in a single day. Budgets are being cast, everyone is looking for the right drop box to put their IT dollars and wait for maximum magic for the amount spent. While I am not involved in a majority of these visits, there's one industry vertical where SCM practice consistently gets invited to present their point of view, viz., Retail. My reasoning for this is that there’s really no other industry where one encounters so many best-of-breed SCM packages strung together by each of these retailers in a collage uniquely their own.

Continue reading "Decide where you integrate: MCO does not equal MCC!" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "2010s - OMSs and WMSs About you, and me, and them, and..." »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Order Management Hubs: Reigning in Complexity" »

Posted by Richard Douglass at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While on the topic of Walmart and Marketplace, I just read two pieces of news which got me excited.

Times UK had published an article a few days ago about Amazon being in secret plans to open High Street Stores in the UK.

Continue reading "Instant Gratification - Walmart Style!" »

Posted by Prasad Acharya at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Applying Warehouse Operations in a Store" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I placed an ‘Online’ order from one of the Kiosks inside a retail outlet. Used a couple of coupons to get $10 off while making the payment at the POS. The customer service was great and the order was delivered in time. As it happens sometimes with orders placed Online, the actual product was not exactly as I expected it to be, so I called up the call center to return it. To my surprise the service representative returned me $10 more than the actual amount I paid!!! So this is what happened: The order I placed at the Kiosk went through to the ‘Online’ system, but the coupon that I used while making the payment at the POS never did. The Customer Service Representative, who was looking at the order in the ‘Online’ system, never saw the coupon and simply returned me the amount that the Kiosk showed.

And guess what, this is not unique to the store I went to. There are many organizations that embraced the pre-paid Kiosk ordering (order Online at the Kiosk and pay at the POS) model so that they do not lose a sale; but they did not do a very good job integrating the ‘Online’ and Retail channels.

Continue reading "The Kiosk conundrum" »

Posted by Sameer Prashar at 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Is the new found focus on Marketplace, the end of the road for core Order Management?" »

Posted by Prasad Acharya at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

While in the checkout line of one of the bigger departmental store chains of US, I overheard one of the customers querying the sales associate on the difference between the price of the same item in the store and on the Store’s website. This particular customer, using a smart phone, had found that the price on the website was 20% lower than that in the store and wanted to pick up the item in the store right away, at the price on the website.

That was not going to happen; the brick-and-mortar business and the online business for this particular store are independent mini organizations of their own. They do not share inventory and their sales channels are different silos in themselves. A reflection on the way the online organizations were set up in the heat of the internet revolution; independent of the brick-and-mortar business.

Continue reading "Get those Channels Integrated…" »

Posted by Sameer Prashar at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Being Unique with MCC: Can Something Buried Under The Hood Be A Differentiator?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In my last post I touched upon the key aspect of developing Return Channel strategy. That is easier said than done and needs extensive data analysis. This brings us to another key step in developing an effective reverse logistics solution: Analyze and Avoid.

Continue reading "Developing a Multichannel Reverse Logistics Solution - 2" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 3:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Retailers of late are embracing the ATB model to maximize order promising, reduce inventory holding and to provide near-to-accurate delivery dates, thus providing improved serviceability to customers.

So what is ATB all about? How does it transform ones business? How should a business gear up to run in such a model?

Continue reading "Evolving Models in Customer Order Servicing – Supply Chain Implications" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "So is SCM Transformation an Oxymoron or a Holy Grail to aspire to?" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 5:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

How can retailers enhance the personal shopping experience, even as they cut staff in all channels?

NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin states, “The expectation of another challenging holiday season does not come as news to retailers, who have been experiencing a pullback in consumer spending for over a year.  To compensate, retailers’ focus on the holiday season has been razor-sharp with companies cutting back as much as possible on operating costs in order to pass along aggressive savings and promotions to customers.” (NRF Forecasts One Percent Decline in Holiday Sales --As Losses Stabilize, Retailers Hone In on Aggressive Promotions, October 6, 2009, National Retail Foundation)

Continue reading "The Forgotten Channel in Cross-Channel Retailing" »

Posted by Jim Bengier at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Developing a Multichannel Reverse Logistics Solution - 1" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Carton Allocation During Warehouse Outbound Process" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The key to successful requirements is to be true to the project goals, to define a requirements strategy and to stick to it as I mentioned in my last entry. In a package implementation the trinity of the business owner, the implementation team and the package vendor need to be aligned with the program vision and timelines.

However, quite often project teams treat requirements as etched in stone. The requirement by itself is just a means to an end. In a package implementation, it is not easy to state the requirements in terms of the package being implemented. We were implementing SterlingCommerce MCF(Multi Channel Fulfillment) and SterlingCommerce Call Center application to replace the client's legacy OMS and call center application. The business requirement owners were new to the package. For the first few sessions, we played an attritional game of "This is what the requirement wants, but this is what the package does". It wasn't going anywhere. There was heartburn and conflict.

At this juncture, as a project team, a decision was taken that the implementation team would also explain what the product does and the why behind that. This led to a longer timeline, but better utilization of the time. Slowly this became a game of "If this is what the package does, how does it meet my overarching requirements". And while the solution was being given shape, the requirement owners restated their requirements in terms of what the package does. 

Continue reading "Solution definition..or Requirements Refining..or Both?" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Continue reading "Video:Accurate fulfillment or A Smooth Checkout Experience? Now you don’t really have to choose..." »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been following the ecommerce strategy at Target for quite a few years now. So, the only surprising part of the news when I read that Target plans to part ways with Amazon was the amount of time it took Target to move in that direction.

Continue reading "Outsource your processes, not your customer!" »

Posted by Prasad Acharya at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Do you have the right strategy for global ecommerce platform deployment?" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I currently consult at a client who are on the verge of going live with a multi channel solution. Through a series of posts I will walk through the various stages of the program.

The title of this post emanates from some recent attempts of "a friend" to figure out the best dieting strategies to reduce weight. Proteins are primarily the building blocks while Carbs provide energy. Some diets focus on Proteins and some on Carbs and some on multiple combinations of these two. This entry is about the solution design phase were we continuously grappled with the protein-carb question.

Protein is the metaphor for the strategic intent while Carbs relate to the tactical considerations to keep moving. How did we decide?

Continue reading "A Multi-Channel Journey - I - Proteins or Carbs" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 3:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Are your customers reaching out to you for repairs?" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Consumers’ Demand Retail Cross-Channel Capabilities" »

Posted by Jim Bengier at 4:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Selecting a WMS package to run your business might be a tricky situation to be in. It can either make or break your business; look out for these common pitfalls that you can avoid in the first place as they can jeopardize your initiative of automating your warehouse.

Continue reading "Mistakes Companies Make While Choosing a WMS" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Big brands doing online war-dances mean more SCM components to fix" »

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "The Perfect Order – The Danger of Aggregate Metrics" »

Posted by Richard Douglass at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

For the Sterling Customer Connection 2009 event, I was asked to co-present the Ecommerce transformation initiative at Life Technologies. As it turned out due to last minute exigencies, Christian Wip, the Director E-Commerce at Life Technologies was unable to make it to the event and I became the sole presenter.
 
The Life Technologies Ecommerce initiative aimed at replacing their ecommerce web based sales channel with a new customer centric and technologically scalable solution based on Sterling MCS.The idea of the presentation was to share key insights, learnings and best practices we put in place to enable this successful transformation.

Continue reading "Life Technologies Ecommerce Transformation speaker session at Sterling Connection 2009" »

Posted by Guneet Paintal at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Road ahead for Sterling MCS & MCF Product Suite - An insight from Sterling Customer Connection 2009" »

Posted by Guest Author at 5:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "eCommerce order fulfillment must use consumer patience in sourcing and fulfillment to optimize cost of shipping to the customer" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Vikram Shukla at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some time back I had written about the key requirements for Multi Tenancy in WMS (here). I spoke about a similar topic at Sterling Commerce Connect (read Gopi's despatches from the event here and here)

The topic was Global WMS deployment and our experiences while doing such implementations. 

In the course of the session we talked about the challenges faced in WMS and we noticed that quite a few were more 'traditional' - pertaining to the standard challenges faced by any software that manages operations. Things like speeding up people's tasks, seamless interleaving of physical movement of inventory and systemic processing; however another interesting facet was the focus on being able to deploy quicker and faster with MORE site specific customizations.  More?

Continue reading "WMS-The new pain points" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 3:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many a time Returns Visibility is assumed to be limited to track and trace of the orders and inventory as they flow in the reverse supply chain. True visibility means having actionable insights into the lifecycle of the return order. This includes maintaining and updating information at unique item level throughout product lifecycle(manufacturing to end-of-life stages), tracking the return reasons and end state dispositions and understanding the customer demographics for the returns. 

Continue reading "Case for Return Lifecycle Management Platform" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Designing optimal customer order allocation by taking into account of inventory fluctuations can be quite complex...." »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A few days back I got the opportunity to talk about the challenges for 3PLs in today's economy on a webcast (available here) with Greg Aimi from AMR.

Greg talked about the latest trends in the space, while I talked about the best in class abilities that a 3PL's WMS should have. During the QnA session at the end, there was a question about the key IT differentiating capabilities for such a WMS. I mentioned that multi tenancy is a hygiene factor and is a given.

A question that cropped up later was what are the best in class multi-tenancy features? 

A laundry list of my must-haves follow:

Continue reading "Multi-Tenancy in WMS" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 2:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Warehouses of the future - What it takes to reach there? Part I" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Supply chain execution investments are increasingly becoming network centric to efficiently manage order delivery and fulfillment visibility across multi-player ecosystems. The emerging technologies for supply chain execution are also keeping to this need.
Adopting network centric technologies brings along multiple challenges that delay the return from such investments. The salient benefits from network based execution management most often have to ride on an over-arching integration initiative which spans across enterprises (in the “network”) and factors in their IT and business change cycles.
Network technologies today  involve replacement of running homegrown execution platforms, for example a warehouse management system.

Continue reading "Adopt Network WMS -- Use events to minimize disruptions and control IT expenses" »

Posted by Satadal at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A ‘hybrid instance strategy’ could help your warehouse consolidation initiatives when confronted with different levels of warehouse maturity. In this blog video, I have tried to articulate the key axes of assessing warehouse maturity (viz., business processes, IT systems and capital expenditure) and how warehouse management systems need to be architected keeping these in mind. The complete paper on this topic written by Girish, Satadal and me is available in the whitepapers section of infosys.com/supply-chain at http://www.infosys.com/supply-chain/white-papers/WMS-consolidation.pdf

Posted by Gopi Krishnan at 4:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Adding a new dimension to customer experience in returns" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 5:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, continuing from my previous blog on Warehouse Costs and Margins, let's now touch upon the components that needs to be included in the contract between the 3PL Warehouse service provider and the Client who will be using the services of the warehouse.

The contract includes, at a broader level, the terms and conditions on usage, rate and billing contract, payment terms, warehouses contracted, billing period, space utilised, the client's customers and warehousing activities agreed upon.

Continue reading "What a 3PL Warehouse contract needs to include" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I was recently part of a set of workshops to identify improvements for a certain client's store experience. The key considerations where generic in nature; enhance the customer store experience, enhance the employee store experience with positive impacts on the company's bottomline.

As part of the discussions we talked about sell through based fulfillment optimization for direct to customer orders. The question that cropped up is whether sell through optimization can be applied uniformly across stores, and whether DCs should be considered at par. Can we just apply the classical sell-through formula or do we bias it?

Continue reading "Sell through comparison across stores and DCs" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the second part of my blog on warehouse costing.

http://infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/2008/11/capturing_warehouse_costs_and.html 

In my previous blog, we touched upon activity based costing. Now let's look at storage based costing. 

As I had mentioned earlier, just to recap, there are three types of costing which comes under storage, they are Storage Unit of Measure (UOM) based costing, Package UOM based and Fixed rental based costing. These are the three types of costing that can be defined, tracked, captured and billed to the customer.

Continue reading "Capturing Warehouse Costs and Margins - Part II" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The answer is an obvious yes. In eCommerce or in multi channel retailing the focus is on cost of effective fulfillment options, reducing working capital and inventory.  In the last 6 months there has been no extreme step such as eCommerce program put on hold due to the ongoing crisis. While long term strategy will be intact but eCommerce investment is likely to be spread over longer horizon. There is definitely much more emphasis on prioritizing eCommerce platform technology investments. 

Continue reading "Will there be impact of economic downturn on eCommerce platform investments?" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As an emerging trend over last year or so, retailers are warming up to the idea of store level collaboration with the suppliers. Supplier collaboration can enable retailers to improve the three most important store level metrics - availability, cycle times, and cost. When the retailers start sharing the POS and inventory data to the vendors in a near real time view and define business processes to support action on the data, that allows the supply chain managers at both ends collaborate to make decisions.

Continue reading "What is selling in my stores?" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is my third blog which is an extension of my previous one, "Channels to Leverage Warehouse Revenue". In this blog, I will explain what a WMS software needs to scale up to in order to capture revenue related information.

First, it must be able to capture costs for warehousing tasks carried out or space utilised. Having said this, tasks carried out will be treated under activity based costing, wherein each activity carried out within a WMS transaction will have an certain cost associated to it.

Continue reading "Capturing Warehouse Costs and Margins" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Five 'I's' of Supply Chain Visibility" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 5:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "I can’t see you but I want to be nice to you." »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day, I had someone requesting me on package comparison in the DOM space on “key” functionalities.  The so called “DOM”  or “distributed order management “ can  be misunderstood, generally because it can be confusing to demarcate the DOM process boundary! Interestingly, even package vendors interpret and draw their own boundaries, often overstate when it comes to DOM package functionality. 
The first and the foremost, people confuse DOM offering as the process that covers the entire functionality from customer (or partner) “Inquiry for the product or services” to “Cash” business process. However, what I have seen in the past, the product leaders in this space always focus on providing functionality that compliments the existing infrastructure that supports customer order lifecycle process.  Anyone implementing DOM will encounter the question - do I really need DOM?

Continue reading "How distributed is DOM?" »

Posted by Vinayak Hegde at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is in continuation to my previous blog on "Considering Warehouse as Profit Center".

http://infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/2008/09/considering_warehouse_as_profi.html#more

Now let's look into how a warehouse can transform itself into this new found 'avtaar'. One such aspect would be to have multiple business units within the same organization utilize the services of a single warehouse. In such a setup, business units store their goods in the warehouse in dedicated zones allotted to them. The warehouse, in turn charges each business unit for storing their goods based on activities carried out and storage space utilization, thereby creating revenue for itself.

Continue reading "Channels to Leverage Warehouse Revenue" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

As one of the bloggers (Chandradeep) posted earlier, companies look to optimize their inventory levels (or "Sell Nothing") while maximizing their sales per customer footfall/click through. (http://infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/2008/09/how_to_sell_nothing.html#more)

One key aspect is to define the ‘Available to Sell’ Strategy. In layman's term, ‘Available to Sell’ is what the company can promise for a delivery in a specified time window. This includes the current uncommitted inventory at a fulfillment location and any open purchase orders. This can even be extended to supplier finished inventory, WIP inventory and scheduled plans.

Continue reading "What is your Available to Sell Strategy?" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Consolidation has been traditionally looked as a mechanism to bring in economies of scale. Of late, organizations that operate across geographies are investing to standardize processes, execution models and technology in the warehouses. The context of warehouse processes and information resident in there, has changed in the supply chain architecture. Warehouse level information now is being "consumed for efficiency and better customer response" correlating to order/demand and inventory position information in more real time. Consolidation programs that embed process, technology and operational standardization therefore can greatly simplify journey towards this "enhanced warehouse awareness" in their supply chain and help differentiate the fulfillment execution.

As an architect, I have been involved with a number of such programs and have seen that warehouses being execution centric, a standardization approach needs to consider factors specific to every warehouse like working policies, use of automation and robotics technologies, handling of specific goods and delivery of value added services apart from warehouse layouts. Given such local dependencies, WMS consolidation initiatives must allow reuse or adoption of local mature practices while conforming to the template of global practice and design.

Continue reading "Warehouse consolidation: managing effectiveness" »

Posted by Satadal at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the good old days shopping trips were simple. I lived in town A, went to a store in town A and bought whatever I needed. Sometimes I would go all the way to big city B. If they didn't have what I wanted in big city B, the people at the store might order it for me.

Today (in these convenient new times) I am in town A, log onto an ISP in city B, that connects to a site hosted in country C; the site belonging to a company headquartered in country D; that fulfills my order from a distribution center that could be anywhere in the world.

So the question is: When tax laws require triangulation between point of order capture, point of sale and final ship to address, how do we figure these out? When nearly everything is electronic, which tax jurisdiction do my bits live in?

Continue reading "Where is this bit from?" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Corporations are increasingly focusing on the systems that help them manage their demand, their sales and ensure every connect converts to a sale and every sale is fulfilled. 

As a supply chain consultant I discuss optimal processes and practices with companies. In meetings and solutions we propose lean inventory, order on demand and efficiency of process. As a consumer I go to multiple stores, e-stores looking for what I want, at the best possible cost and with the fastest in hand time.

How do various companies marry the conflicting needs of "right" inventory levels with the real time fulfillment demands of an increasing finicky customer? In a limiting case, how do I keep nothing on stock but still sell everything and get it to customers before they look elsewhere? (Of course, "nothing in stock" is hyperbole for optimal inventory levels)

Continue reading "How to sell nothing?" »

Posted by Chandradeep Bandyopadhyay at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With multi channel retail becoming the latest buzz about the retail town, most retailers today allow their customers to interact via multiple channels, offering a combination of stores, call centers, and web sites. Surveys have indicated that customers want to be engaged in a consistent way in all channels, else the retailers risk losing them. Many retailers do claim a "Shop anywhere, Pay anyway and Return anywhere" offering, however due to the disparate infrastructures that typically underlie these individual channels, consumers who cross over the channels as part of their shopping cycle often face an experience that is fragmented, inconsistent, and annoying to the customer.

Continue reading "Multi Channel Sales - All Green, Cross Channel Experience - Blinking Red !!" »

Posted by Amarpal Sanghera at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Warehouses have come of age. So have the technologies that run them.
Not so long back, warehouses were treated as cost centres, always taking the back seat when it came to formulating business strategies for revenue generation. But times are changing.

Continue reading "Considering Warehouse as Profit Center" »

Posted by Lokmanya Rawat at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

On one hand, this business model best suits the asset intensive business – factories, truck fleets, data centers, networks to achieve high utilization rates and therefore their returns on invested capital. On the other hand, it helps the entrepreneurs and companies scale up their business with quick access to these assets at no fixed investment cost and hence achieve a competitive equity. In effect business are getting to run on the variable costs with no/less fixed costs and hence keeping their balance sheets light.

 All is well as long as these leaders can match up their supply with the demands. However what happens when the demand exceeds the supply, will the single supply chain powerhouse be able to promise indefinite/endless supply capacity to its suppliers & eco system. A competitive advantage through scale may be hard to maintain when many players, large and small, have equal access to resources at low marginal costs.

Posted by Sujatha Shanmugam at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)