Department Stores: Unite Departments and Channels to Beat the Competition

It's no secret that department store retailing is no longer simply operating an anchor store at the mall—you need expertise across channels. And with private-label merchandise, your supply chain gets longer and more complex every day managing the overseas purchasing process. To complicate matters, discounters now offer the brands that have been your staple offerings. Top brands—and best sellers—compete directly with their own stores and Internet presence. How can you compete?

Play to your strengths with emphasis on great customer service and fully integrated distribution channels to ensure your best customers come to you first and always. With the right mix of products, reduced out-of-stocks, simplified returns and seamless integration among your stores, catalogs and the Web, you can improve customer satisfaction and financial performance simultaneously. At the same time, you need to increase inventory turns and lower your operating costs.

Manhattan offers customization of Supply Chain Solutions for Retail for department stores that give you the planning and execution solutions you need to optimize inventory, respond quickly to changes in demand and ensure the best mix of products by channel, geography or customer type. At the same time, Supply Chain Solutions for Retail identify your unique challenges and provide the tools you need to streamline operations, increase flexibility in your supply chain, and improve profitability across all channels.

Success Is in the Bag

Manhattan's Supply Chain Solutions for Retail bring together key modules from across our Solution Suites to meet the needs specific to department stores:

• Demand Forecasting: Keep it simple and accurate. Predict demand at the product and location level for replenishment. Use the same system for financial or assortment planning.
• Multi-Channel Planning; Integrate planning for your Web, catalog and store operations to reduce redundancy and increase efficiency, while still respecting the unique nature of each distribution channel.
• Promotion Planning: Coordinate all aspects of your promotions from one solution. Track results and manage replenishment to avoid stock-outs on featured products.
• Replenishment: Turn inventory faster by ensuring you have what you need, where you need it, when you need it.
• Distributed Order Management: Keep your supply and customer demand in profitable balance. A global view of inventory—at the supplier, in transit or at the warehouse—combines with cross-channel order reporting to enable you to deliver what your customers want, when they want it.
• Transportation Lifecycle Management: Reduce costs, reroute around trouble spots, coordinate deliveries precisely and deliver more, faster, for less money. Connect your transportation network from procurement to delivery.
• Warehouse Management: Fine-tune your facility with a more efficient layout, well utilized resources, streamlined inventory and flawless order fulfillment. Cross-docking and flow-through capabilities reduce the need for warehouse space.
• Labor Management: Standardize and track the tasks throughout your operation. Reward quality and safety, boost productivity and forecast with better precision.
• Extended Enterprise Management: Collaborate with your trading partners to efficiently communicate and ensure goods move smoothly to your customers at minimum cost.
• Supply Chain Visibility: See a single, consistent, real-time view of your entire global supply chain for greater inventory control, promote optimal fulfillment channels, and reduce cycle time variability to lower safety stock levels.
• Supply Chain Event Management: Track and monitor supply chain events real-time and respond immediately based upon alerts to critical exception events, which may threaten your ability to meet customer demand.

Contact Information: To learn more about Manhattan Associates' supply chain solutions, simply complete the information request form, and we will contact you. For North & South America, call +1 877.596.9208 or e-mail info_americas@manh.com. For global inquiries, call +44 (0)1344 318000 or e-mail info_global@manh.com.