A Walk Through Your Supply Chain
A good retail management system helps you manage your operations from the beginning to the end of the supply chain. That includes store budgeting. After all, your budget determines to a large degree how much and what kinds of product you can invest in with the best budget planning software. And when it’s time to order, a good open-to-buy system can manage that process for you quite efficiently.
So you order your product and have it delivered to your central warehouse. What happens then? You have to receive the inventory, input it into your system so you can track it, and put it on the shelves so that you can distribute it to the various stores within your chain. Allocation of that inventory is very important to ensure that all of your stores have the inventory they need to meet the customers’ needs. This process begins with a good warehouse management module.
Once you’ve got the product in your warehouse, it’s then imperative that you track every SKU item to know its location and quantities before it is sold to the customer. You have to manage the product.
Then you put it on the shelves and mark its price, which is an art in itself. Every product has a lifecycle. That lifecycle can include sales and promotions to encourage the sell of your merchandise. So you have two components working at the same time merchandising and price management. And if you have a Web store — it’s nearly impossible to remain competitive today without one -you’ve got to integrate your Web fulfillment processes into your overall retail plan.
Finally, you’ve got the point of sale. Where do your customers buy your product? You’ll have those customers who visit your stores and purchase the traditional way — through the cash register. Other customers will order online, and many of them will order through their mobile devices. And to be most effective at getting each customer what they want, you’ll need a system to manage your customers through any and every channel they interact with you through.
If you’re going to be an effective retailer, you’ll also need a way to track, monitor, and analyze all of your processes from beginning to end with the best budget planning software like ChainDrive.
In effect, supply chain management is retail operations management. If you want to scale-up your retail operations today, request a free online demo.