The Business Situation
In today's fast moving retail marketplace, customers are becoming more demanding of both the products they desire and the organisations that are supplying them. How can retailers keep up with their seemingly insatiable appetite?
A common issue for retailers is product availability. As consumers, we have all wanted to buy a product and experienced the frustration of finding that it was out of stock. This problem does not only affect the consumer—the retailer is also impacted due to the inability to make a sale and the negative impact caused to the brand.
Why has it taken so long to solve the problem?
Out of stock is not a simple problem. All retailers understand the issues involved with running an effective and efficient supply chain however, a consumer when faced with an out of stock typically will source the product from one of your competitors.
Historically I.T. constraints have meant that retailers have been unable to solve the out of stock challenge due to the technological limitations of their legacy systems.
Why should I.T. systems dictate how your business is run?
They shouldn’t. In the past retailers have processed data during overnight batch cycles. This has typically resulted in a 24 hour delay in receiving and reacting to the vital information required to run the business. Over time the complexity and limitations of these systems have increased resulting in retailers losing agility.
Today these limitations do not need to exist, integration technology is now available to reduce these delays by harnessing the power of real time data. Sales, stock, ordering and return information can all be responded to in near real time, enabling the business to work as fast as both the customers and retailers want it to.
What is Real Time Retail and how can it help?
Real Time Retail is the capture of business events as they occur and making them available to you the decision maker or your systems. Important events such as sales or deliveries can be known about now rather than tomorrow or next week.
Real Time Retail can shrink your supply chain, streamline distribution, improve employee productivity, increase sales and help to take the guess-work out of your sales reporting.
Related Links