The customer shopping experience encompasses more channels than ever before — ecommerce, mobile apps, online marketplaces, social sites, and wholesalers, to name but a few. Omnichannel fulfillment strategies generate the end-to-end supply chain visibility you need to provide frictionless, error-free customer experiences across channels.
With this enhanced visibility, you not only provide more transparent and holistic customer experiences. You also optimize inventory levels, lower storage and shipping costs, and facilitate data-informed decision-making.
Before we discuss the best strategies for enhancing supply chain visibility and omnichannel fulfillment, let’s define these two terms and understand why they’re so interdependent.
Understanding Supply Chain Visibility
Supply chain visibility is the ability to track inventory as it moves along your supply chain, from the procurement of raw materials to the moment it arrives on your customer’s doorstep.
This real-time visibility into the location and status of your inventory enables you to optimize your entire supply chain. So, you can maintain optimal stock levels, prepare for disruptions, and provide better customer experiences.
It’s why, according to a recent survey, end-to-end visibility solutions are the #1 investment priority for supply chain management.
Attaining such high levels of visibility is difficult. As global expansion and diverse sales channels increase the complexity of our supply chain network, businesses must implement omnichannel fulfillment strategies and technologies.
The Role of Omnichannel Fulfillment in Supply Chain Management
Omnichannel fulfillment describes the end-to-end process of picking, packing, and shipping orders. But unlike traditional fulfillment — where orders originate from a single channel, such as a brick-and-mortar store — omnichannel fulfillment fulfills orders made from customers across diverse sales channels, physical stores, and online marketplaces.
With so many separate moving parts, it’s easy to lose track of inventory levels and order statuses in different locations. This can result in understocks, overstocks, and inventory write-offs, which are costly for your business and harmful to customer experiences.
It can cause other issues too, such as late shipments, lost/incorrect items, and inaccurate tracking.
Supply chain management depends on effective omnichannel fulfillment to integrate inventory and order data. When data and communications are synchronized across channels, it provides unity, consistency, and a single source of truth.
This means that your customers can enjoy seamless shopping experiences. They might, for example, purchase in-store for home delivery, purchase online for in-store collection, or purchase through social media, an app, or even a chatbot — all while seeing the most up-to-date stock availability.
Not only that, but they can also track their ordered packages from your warehouse to their doorstep.
Strategies to Enhance Supply Chain Visibility
Technology, data, and communication are the three main pillars of supply chain visibility. Let’s explore how they can be implemented as a strategy to unlock transparency.
Leverage Technology for Real-Time Tracking
The ability to track inventory in real-time — both static and in-transit goods — provides granular insight into your supply chain.
RFID, GPS-tracking, and blockchain technologies all monitor the route of inventory as it travels from the supplier to the end customer. This gives teams insight into order locations, statuses, and conditions, allowing them to optimize inventory allocation and make data-backed predictions.
Plus, customer service teams can keep customers in the know with regular, accurate shipping and delivery information.
To access these tracking capabilities, you’ll need a powerful omnichannel fulfillment solution. Examples include inventory management software and order management software, both of which utilize real-time tracking technologies to monitor orders, stock, and fulfillment.
Use an ERP wholesale business management software to seamlessly integrate inventory, order fulfillment, accounting, and logistics. With centralized, real-time access to all of your data, teams across departments can not only track inventory reliably through fulfillment, but they can also identify and mitigate risks, automate processes, and leverage data to provide better customer experiences.
Use Data Analytics and Predictive Modeling
Supply chain visibility encompasses more than knowing the location and status of your stock. It involves eliminating every blind spot so that you have an end-to-end view of your supply chain and, within it, any weak links.
To achieve such a feat, you need data analytics.
AI-powered technologies, such as data analytics and inventory management solutions, automatically collect supply chain data. They can extract data from a variety of sources, such as IoT sensors, RFID tags, websites, and POS systems.
This gives you fast access to vast volumes of data: inventory levels, order volumes, transportation costs, order picking accuracy, order cycle time, and a host of other order fulfillment metrics.
But data analytics doesn’t just show you your supply chain weaknesses. It tells you exactly why they’re there. It can help you spot operational inefficiencies such as excess stock, understock, expensive transportation costs, and internal data entry errors.
Predictive modeling is another useful strategy, enhancing supply chain visibility through inventory forecasting.
Predictive analytics leverage statistical algorithms, machine learning, and historical data (such as sales history and market trends) to project future demand, seasonal trends, and potential disruptions. This provides holistic supply chain visibility that can be used for inventory optimization and risk mitigation.
Prioritize Communication and Collaboration Across all Channels
An effective omnichannel fulfillment strategy relies on the seamless synchronization of your sales and distribution channels. By integrating your inventory and order fulfillment solutions with your sales channels (ecommerce websites, brick-and-mortar stores, mobile apps, social media platforms, etc), you provide customers with harmoniously connected experiences.
Customers should, for example, be able to find a product on your website, see its availability in their nearest brick-and-mortar store, purchase the product online using click-and-collect, and proceed to pick it up from the physical store.
Or, should the customer opt for delivery, they should receive purchase confirmation, shipping details, and delivery information via their preferred channels, such as email, push notifications, or SMS.
Integrating your fulfillment tech stack with a robust CRM system is vital. CRMs collect customer data (e.g., order history and statuses, past interactions, and purchasing behaviors) to enable you to personalize shopping and shipping experiences across channels.
With all of these channels unified, different departments and locations can seamlessly connect and collaborate to increase supply chain visibility.
Implement Omnichannel Fulfillment Strategies
So, what omnichannel fulfillment techniques and technologies can you implement in conjunction with the above? Let’s find out.
Centralized vs. Decentralized Fulfillment Strategies
There are two types of operations that business logistics can leverage in the supply chain: centralized and decentralized fulfillment models.
In a centralized fulfillment strategy, distribution processes are concentrated in a single hub (or, in the case of large enterprises, a handful of major hubs). This hub stores and ships all business inventory.
There are several pros to using the traditional centralized distribution model. For one, centralization streamlines operations and simplifies standardization, providing better visibility. It also drives lower storage expenses. But it does come at the cost of longer last-mile delivery timeframes and increased shipping costs, which hurt customer experiences.
In a decentralized fulfillment strategy, distribution centers are strategically dispersed across multiple locations. Optimally, they’re as close to the consumer as possible and customized to suit the inventory needs of customers in the area. This results in shorter delivery times, lower transport costs, and better customer experiences. But, on the downside, it increases operational costs and complexity, which can lead to poor visibility.
Both models have merit. Weigh up the pros and cons and align each model’s attributes with your strategic goals to determine which strategy would better serve your business. A warehousing and fulfillment service can help you connect with reliable warehousing companies.
Inventory Management and Optimization
If you fulfill orders across multiple channels, avoiding costly overstocks and understocks and maintaining record accuracy is almost impossible without an inventory tracking solution.
Inventory tracking software streamlines the process of monitoring inventory by automating stock tracking, order processing, reordering, and other error-prone manual tasks. Doing so gives you accurate, real-time visibility of your inventory across locations. This inventory can be monitored to optimize stock levels and provide up-to-date stock availability across channels.
To further optimize stock levels, reduce risks, and improve cost-effectiveness, you can leverage the solution’s data and analytics capabilities to predict future demand and generate in-depth inventory reports.
Streamlining Order Processing and Delivery
Providing timely processing, shipping, and delivery is critical for converting and retaining customers. In a survey by Statista, fast shipping (60%) and shipment tracking (56%) were ranked as the most important delivery criteria after free delivery.
Strategies for streamlining order processing and delivery include:
- Centralized order management: Use an order management system to consolidate order processing across channels into one place. This gives teams a single source of truth for all orders, mitigating discrepancies and errors.
- Automated shipping: Automated shipping technologies automate and streamline tasks such as order picking, order packing, label generation, and shipment tracking. They can also optimize shipping methods, such as routes and carriers, improving the speed and cost-effectiveness of your shipping.
- Shipping tracking: Give customers the ability to track their packages. Send automated real-time shipment updates so that customers can see the status, location, and estimated arrival time of their packages. When you offer customers this transparency, you manage expectations and boost satisfaction.
Wrapping Up Thoughts on Enhancing Supply Chain Visibility
In the age of the omnichannel customer experience, it’s only fitting that we should deploy omnichannel fulfillment strategies to unify operational processes along with our sales channels.
By leveraging centralized data analytics, real-time tracking technologies, and seamless integration, you can enhance visibility into the supply chain and use this knowledge to deliver better, more interconnected shopping experiences. Use these tips to develop a strategy that works for you.
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