Distributed Order Management: Keep Supply and Demand in Profitable Balance
Meeting customer demand on a timely basis drives customer satisfaction, while ordering excess inventory hurts your bottom line. Keep supply and demand in profitable balance with Distributed Order Management. That means having a global view of your inventory—at the supplier, in transit or at your warehouse—along with real-time aggregated order reporting. You'll always know what you need and what you have.
Distributed Order Management simplifies your fulfillment process by orchestrating the following services inside a business process engine:
- Aggregating and prioritizing orders: Whether your customers order online, at a store or through your call center, all orders land in a central repository for visibility and enterprise-wide order fulfillment. Distributed Order Management also ensures your most important customers receive the inventory when it's in short supply.
- Sourcing: Optimize procurement across an extensive supply network, including stores, distribution centers and your suppliers, to meet current demand. Automatically generate purchase orders for additional supplies when needed. Plan for the future with Demand Forecasting. Receive immediate notice of events that may delay order delivery.
- Scheduling and shipping: Ensure your delivery commitments remain realistic by monitoring available-to-promise (ATP) requirements. Efficiently route your orders to customers, distribution centers, retailers and partners to minimize delivery time and storage costs. Reduce transportation costs by linking to Transportation Planning and Execution.
- Managing exceptions and substitutions: Predict inventory shortages, potential customer service issues and delivery problems, so you have the time and information necessary to place new orders, reroute, substitute and communicate with customers. Reduce back-orders and meet customer demand by automating substitutions for similar products based on your own rules.
- Deploying Inventory: Reroute in-transit inventory based on where it's needed most. Monitor distribution center and store-level inventory positions and distribute inventory as it clears customs. Fulfill customer orders from anywhere in the inbound network, including transloading facilities and logistics hubs.
- Reporting: Capture key performance metrics and establish benchmarks for on-time deliveries, cash-to-cash cycle time, inventory turns and forecasting accuracy. Get the information you need to continuously improve your fulfillment process.
Order Management That Goes Both Ways
Delivering product to customers meets an important part of your demand, but not all of it. Sometimes you need to manage returns as well. With Reverse Logistics Management, capture customer information, track return reasons, and automatically select the optimal mode of transportation for returns.