About Bridge

Company

What We Do

Management Team

Our Thought Leaders

Strategic Partnerships

For Added Value

Global Presence

Developed & Emerging Markets

Why Bridge?

5 Reasons To Partner With Us

Your Experienced Trusted Advisor

Customer Case Studies

Business Challenges Solved

Our Customers

Well Known and Global

Testimonials

What our customers are saying

White Papers & Data Sheets

Excellent Resources

Order Management & Optimization

Fluent Commerce

SaaS Order Management

IBM

Order Management & B2B Integration

Magento

Order Management

Akana

Enterprise API

Commerce Solutions

Ultra Commerce

E-Commerce Solution

Mirakl

Marketplace

Bridge Products

Bridge Rabbit

Subscription Order Management

Bridge Eagle

Process and Transaction Monitoring Tool

Bridge Coral

Enterprise Commerce Integration Platform

Yantra Commerce WMS

Increase warehouse efficiency

Spare Parts Logistics

Streamline Your Spare Parts Logistics

Business Strategy

Omni-Channel Fulfillment Strategy

Ensure profitable fulfillment

Inventory Visibility Strategy

Reduce carrying costs

Delivery Experience Assessment

How well do you deliver orders?

Solution Support

Consulting

Strategy, design, implementation

Performance Testing

Don't let peak loads slow you down

Managed Services

On-site and hosted

Education

Product Training

Solutions

Order Management Systems

And related solutions

Warehouse Management Systems

And related solutions

Enterprise Application Integration

iPaaS, ESB, EDI, MFT

Industries

Retail

Deliver well

Manufacturing

Industrial Distribution

3PL

Activity Based Billing

Development Services

Custom Development

Custom Software and Applications

Elastic Stack Development

Enable Real-time Analytics

Offshore Services

Quality Off-Shore Resources

Data Services

Data Warehousing

For Business Intelligence

Inventory Visibility Solutions

How to solve your Inventory Visibility Challenges

Inventory Visibility

S

truggling with inventory visibility? You’re not alone. While the root cause may differ, businesses large and small face this same challenge every day. Yet your ability to guarantee fulfillment of customer orders will determine your success. It’s essential for growth, and survival, in competitive markets.

Let’s look at four causes of inventory inaccuracy and some approaches to solving them.

Manual Warehouse Management

THE PROBLEM

You’ve grown. What started as a manageable level of inventory, and a team that knew the location of every item, fell apart. Business has picked up. Orders come in faster. Your workers are drowning in a sea of printed pick sheets. The receiving dock overflows. There’s little time to train new hires, and location discipline falls apart. Getting orders out the door is your only objective. Every day is a scramble.

HOW TO SOLVE IT

The key is to start with a Warehouse Management System (WMS). Something flexible, that can be rolled out quickly, and in phases. The first phase may even mimic your paper based processes so you can rollout automated processes over time. This lets you minimize business disruption as you incrementally improve operations. And because today’s systems can be used to run multiple warehouses, you’ll be prepared for future expansion.

Expanded Locations

THE PROBLEM

Expansion is exciting. New sites let you serve new customers. Or provide better service to existing ones. But unless all the systems used to

manage each location are connected in real-time (or close to), you’ll never really know how much inventory you have on hand. This means each site carries its own safety stock. The result? Increased inventory carrying costs.

HOW TO SOLVE IT

Connect your locations. It doesn’t matter if they’re warehouses, store fronts, or 3PLs. By linking all the different systems (like WMSs and Point of Sale systems (POSs)) used to manage inventory at each location, you’ll have a single view of inventory.  What’s the best way do it? Use an Order Management System (OMS),  possibly with a little help from an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). The OMS acts as your inventory master, and provides a consolidated view of what you have Available to Promise (ATP) or Available to Sell (ATS) across your entire distribution network. As an added benefit, using an OMS can help reconcile your sales channels too…

Sales Channel Silos

THE PROBLEM

There are many ways to capture orders. Field sales, EDI, fax, email, customer service reps, and  eCommerce. But if they’re not connected, it’s difficult to know who sold what, and how much inventory is left. Like the multi-location challenge, if you have multiple sales channels that are out of sync, it ties up cash. How? By requiring additional safety stock to reduce the risk of customer disappointment because one channel sold inventory promised by another. But more than that, disparate sales channels mean your customer doesn’t have a real-time view of all their orders, which results in a frustrating customer experience.

HOW TO SOLVE IT

This is where an OMS shines. If you connect all your sales channels either directly into the OMS or via an ESB, you’ll always have a clear picture of how much you’ve sold. It even provides an  order entry/edit interface for your customer service reps. And by connecting that same OMS with your warehouses, you’ll be able to see how much inventory you have left. This clear picture of inventory lets you lower safety stock levels and reduce overall inventory carrying costs.

Mergers and Acquisitions

THE PROBLEM

As organic growth slows, many mid to large enterprises rely on acquisitions for expansion. But mergers are hard. You need to combine people, culture, and business processes. Inventory systems as well. And how quickly you can achieve these synergies directly impacts your Return on Investment (ROI) on acquisitions. Many businesses struggle to integrate multiple ERP, CRM, and ecommerce systems. And many divisions are resistant. They want to preserve their service differentiators, and believe merged systems will be restrictive. Yet, a single view of inventory and customer order history across divisions is key to consolidating shared services and keeping customers loyal.

HOW TO SOLVE IT

Luckily, by using an OMS (once again, possibly assisted by an ESB), you can meet both goals. How? By speeding integration. New acquisitions only need to integrate with a single platform (OMS/ESB). The OMS then automatically routes centrally captured orders to the appropriate division, while those divisions continue to use their existing fulfillment processes and systems. No need to rip and replace. And no need to directly integrate ERPs. The OMS is the common

platform that provides a single view of both inventory and customer orders across your organization.

Key Benefits of Inventory Visibility

The benefits of achieving inventory visibility are enormous. And a necessary stepping stone to future growth. With global inventory visibility provided by a distributed Order Management System you can:

  • Reduce shipment turnaround times
  • Eliminate excessive safety stock so you can reduce inventory carrying costs
  • Minimize out-of-stocks, over-sells and mark-downs
  • Enable customers to place a single order for products fulfilled by multiple divisions
  • Speed the ROI on mergers and acquisitions
  • Promise against inbound inventory from suppliers
  • Leverage store inventory to fulfill online orders (retailers)

And most importantly, keep your customers happy!

To learn more about ways to achieve inventory visibility across your organization, please Contact Us.

 

Contact Us