ment and providing the best possible cus-
tomer service, Daugherty and others agree.
“As obvious as this may sound, the first
thing retailers must have is inventory accuracy at the store level. If you don’t know
how much you have on hand … then your
B2C [business-to-consumer] e-commerce
fulfillment from the store isn’t going to
work,” Daugherty explains. “I know that
sounds terribly obvious, but I still run into
retail companies in some verticals that
aren’t very good at that.
“I would say that’s the first thing,”
Daugherty adds. “That’s table stakes.”
ADD TECHNOLOGY, SERVICES
Technology is the next piece of the puzzle,
and it can be used to create operational efficiencies as well as improve customer-en-gaging activities. Bomber points to handheld mobile devices, which are increasingly
finding their way into the store, as one
example. Such devices put information at
an associate’s fingertips, allowing them to
move through the store with an automated
system for filling orders. The devices can
include scanners, RFID (radio-frequency
identification) readers, printers, and rugged mobile handheld computers designed
to fit a wide variety of retail environments.
Honeywell offers a “connected retail” solu-
tion that combines a handheld comput-
er with voice-directed technology (in the
form of a wireless headset) and software
that connects to a retailer’s inventory man-
agement system for this very purpose. Such
systems also allow in-store associates to
walk-in traffic, associates must now
accommodate online shoppers who
are picking up or returning items
in the store as well as prepare “ship
from store” e-commerce orders—
entirely different tasks than they’ve
had to perform in the past. Supply
chain service providers say such
changes are reshaping the retail
store from a people, process, and
technology point of view, with an
emphasis on the latter aspect.
“Technology is a huge piece of
this,” Bomber says, emphasizing
the need to prepare in-store associates to meet changing demands.
“It comes down to empowering the
associate and putting technology
into the associate’s hands.”
START WITH A PLAN
There are some prerequisites when
it comes to improving the retail
fulfillment process, and most have
to do with inventory planning and
management. Rod Daugherty, vice
president of product strategy for
Atlanta-based cloud supply chain
planning solutions provider Blue
Ridge Global, explains that compa-
nies must first have a good e-com-
merce platform in place, along with
solid strategies for planning and
managing their inventory invest-
ment across all channels. This
means that their e-commerce chan-
nel doesn’t operate in a vacuum
and that they have or are work-
ing toward a single, unified view
of inventory that allows them to
position products where they are
most likely to be needed. The latter
requires optimizing in-store inven-
tory for both “click and collect”
(in which buyers purchase prod-
ucts online and pick them up in
the retail store) and ship-from-store
fulfillment. A single view of inven-
tory also helps promote accuracy,
which is key to improving fulfill-
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