From Guesswork to Gold: The Hidden Power of Unified Data

The retail landscape is shifting beneath our feet, and savvy merchants are scrambling for solid ground. While some cling to outdated practices, a select few are unlocking a secret weapon that's revolutionizing the industry: the unification of inventory, finances, and customer demand.

According to SaaS solution Ekyam.ai, less than a third of retailers can accurately pinpoint their stock levels at any given moment. It's a sobering statistic that speaks volumes about the chaos lurking behind many storefronts. But what if there was a way to turn this retail roulette into a precision science? Buckle up, because we're about to explore how integrating these three critical elements can transform your business from guesswork to greatness.

The Trifecta of Retail Success

Imagine a retail world where your inventory systems, financial data, and customer demand insights all speak the same language. It's not a far-off dream—it's the new reality for forward-thinking retailers. By integrating these three crucial aspects of your business, you're not just organizing data; you're unleashing a retail superpower.

Gone are the days of the dreaded "Sorry, we're out of stock" conversation. With unified systems, you gain real-time visibility into your inventory across all channels. This means knowing exactly what you have, where it is, and when it's selling faster than hot cakes on a cold morning.

Ted Baker's Unified Inventory System Case Study

Ted Baker implemented OneStock's Order Management System (OMS) to create a unified view of inventory across their entire business. This system addressed several key challenges and produced impressive results:

Problem: Reducing Stockouts

Prior to implementing the OMS, Ted Baker faced issues with stockouts in their e-commerce channel. Items that were not available in the warehouse were inaccessible to online customers, leading to lost sales and decreased customer satisfaction.

Solution: Ship from Store

The OneStock OMS enabled Ted Baker to implement a "Ship from Store" capability. This allowed them to fulfill online orders using inventory from their retail stores when warehouse stock was unavailable.

Key Results:

1. 1. Increased Sales: In the first year of implementation, Ted Baker fulfilled over 100,000 additional orders from just 30 stores. This represented an 8% increase in UK e-commerce turnover.
   2. Improved Inventory Utilization: During peak periods, such as December 2019, 30,000 orders (13% of total UK e-commerce turnover) were fulfilled by stores. These orders would have been lost prior to the new system.
   3. Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: The system provided real-time visibility of inventory across the entire business, allowing Ted Baker to offer an enhanced delivery promise with confidence in the accuracy and reliability of stock and delivery information.
   4. Rapid Replenishment: The sophisticated order orchestration capabilities ensured customer demand was fulfilled in the most timely and efficient way, improving customer satisfaction while maximizing margin.
   5. Increased Store Productivity: Each Ted Baker store began shipping more than 350 products per month, utilizing previously idle inventory.
   6. Peak Performance: During Black Friday sales, Ted Baker saw more than 6,000 additional orders fulfilled from store stock, demonstrating the system's ability to handle high-demand periods.

Financial Agility

When your inventory and financial systems are in sync, you're not just counting stock—you're counting profits. This integration allows for more accurate forecasting, better cash flow management, and the ability to make data-driven decisions on the fly.

AI has played a large role in the practicality of shortening the data syncs that enable stock levels across channels in financial planning. A popular European coffee chain faced significant challenges:

• Maintaining freshness of perishable items
• Balancing stock levels across multiple locations
• Adapting to changing customer preferences
• Minimizing waste while ensuring product availability

The company implemented a product mix optimization solution by ThroughPut AI to address these challenges, reducing inventory by 15% and improving labor productivity by 5%. How did they do it?

1. Elimination of Stock Pile-ups: The AI system provided full visibility into inventory turnover frequency, customer reorder patterns, shipping costs, and lead times at the individual SKU level.
2. Demand-Value Matrix: The system prioritized products based on demand sensitivity, which helped free up cash flow.
3. Dynamic Menu Modification: Real-time visibility into current customer demand and near-term predictions allowed the café to modify its menu in response to anticipated changes in customer preferences without disrupting customer experience or wasting resources.
4. Improved On-Time In-Full (OTIF) for Fresh Products: The AI helped prioritize goods and materials for maximum effective utilization, ensuring the right materials were available in the right volume at the right time.
5. Continuous Product Mix Optimization: This allowed the chain to offer uninterrupted, delightful customer experiences while maximizing profitability and maintaining healthy inventory turnover.

The AI-powered data solution reduced food waste, improved cash flow, labor utilization and customer experience.  All pretty compelling reasons to make systems talk to each other.

Customer-Centric Operations

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this unified approach is the ability to truly align your operations with customer demand. By integrating customer data with inventory and financial systems, you can predict trends, personalize marketing efforts, and ensure you're always stocking what your customers want—sometimes before they even know they want it.

A leading food marketing and distribution company saw an opportunity to reimagine its supply chain management by anticipating and pivoting around obstacles and shifts. Accenture introduced a unified view of demand forecasting that combined internal (sales and inventory) and external data (weather and client restaurant reservations) with AI-driven analytics.

The result was a more holistic view of demand across the enterprise, automating basic orders while allowing humans to focus on critical SKUs. Beyond the 8-figure incremental profit potential, the firm was positioned to compete in the future by creating a culture of continuous learning and innovation.

Rapid Restocking

One of the most impressive benefits of unified systems is the ability to dramatically speed up restocking processes. Traditional methods often leave returned items in limbo for days, representing lost sales opportunities. However, with an integrated approach, the game changes entirely.

A modern and comprehensive data operations approach includes:

• Automating data ingestion, cleaning, and transformations through a modern DataOps pipeline to achieve real-time access to reliable inventory information.
• Creating a centralized cloud data warehouse as a single source of truth, eliminating scattered data silos and ensuring consistency across reports and analyses.
• Implementing user-friendly Business Intelligence tools, enabling sales reps, analysts, and executives to access current stock values and vital metrics on demand.
• Incorporating advanced algorithms to gain deeper insights into inventory trends, unlocking predictive capabilities.

According to AI-inventory solution-provider Pluto7, "Implementing efficient processes for handling and restocking returns (can contribute to a) 10-15% decrease in return handling costs, boosting overall supply chain efficiency."

Marketing Magic

When your marketing team has access to real-time inventory and customer demand data, they can create campaigns that aren't just creative—they're strategic and highly effective.

• Proactive Customer Engagement: Integrating inventory data with sales tools enables companies to proactively engage with customers based on inventory status. For example, if a popular item is running low, sales teams can notify customers who have shown interest in the product, encouraging them to make a purchase before the stock runs out.
• Decision Making: The ability to access unified data from sales and inventory systems provides a holistic view of business operations, facilitating strategic decisions. This could involve phasing out underperforming products, scaling up high-performing lines, or adjusting marketing tactics to better capture market opportunities.
• Customization and Personalization: Businesses can leverage integrated systems to offer more personalized shopping experiences. For example, showing real-time stock levels on e-commerce sites lets customers know the urgency of buying scarce items, which can drive immediate sales.
• Reduced marketing waste: By having accurate, real-time inventory data, marketers can avoid promoting out-of-stock items, reducing wasted marketing spend and improving overall efficiency.
• Improved collaboration: Unified systems facilitate better collaboration between departments. This allows marketing teams to work more closely with product, inventory management and sales teams, ensuring that marketing efforts are aligned with product design, availability and business goals.

Implementing the Future, Today

The best part about this retail revolution? You don't need to be a tech guru to make it happen. Modern unified systems are designed with user-friendliness in mind, allowing you to focus on what you do best—growing your retail empire.

The path to unification might seem daunting, but the benefits far outweigh the initial investment:

• Increased sales through better stock management
• Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty
• More effective marketing campaigns
• Optimized cash flow and financial planning
• Reduced operational costs and improved efficiency

Conclusion

As we've seen from the case studies, retailers across various sectors are already reaping the benefits of unified systems. From fashion to electronics, sporting goods to home decor, the impact is clear and significant. In a world where customer expectations are higher than ever, and competition is just a click away, unifying your inventory, finances, and customer demand isn't just a smart move—it's an essential one. It's time to say goodbye to siloed systems and hello to a integrated, data-driven retail future.

Are you ready to revolutionize your retail operations? Book a meeting to start solving your challenges ahead of the next peak selling season. The future of retail is unified, and it's waiting for you to take the lead.