Today, the power of modern IT systems together with the speed, with which you can collect data from diverse sources, are an invitation to innovate processes. Many businesses in the retail industry could take advantage of this innovation and make the most of information processing in real-time or in near real-time, including inventory management.
Tracking the movements of goods in real time and having a real-time view of the stocks availability allows you to meet customer demands, while optimizing space and the rotation of goods. The use of real time in inventory management is combined with the need to create a dynamic order management to support online sales, marketing campaigns, and data-driven strategies in every omnichannel retail context.
The problems of inventory management and the advantages of real time
Inventory management and inventory flows in general are often bottlenecks for launching new initiatives and for business flexibility. The causes are different: the existence of multiple independently managed warehouses, the variety of product codes, input and output reports drawn up differently and uploaded to the systems on a daily or longer basis. These bad situations involve the risk of overstocking and out of stock, with negative repercussions on revenues and customer experience (CX).
Further problems concern the accumulation of low-turnover stocks and the lack of management tools capable of reporting anomalies and important delays, in addition to recording data. The use of real-time in inventory management allows, at any time, to have an accurate picture of the units of goods and their location. Through appropriate aggregations, real-time data helps to create more efficient and faster processes, guaranteeing a better experience for the consumer.
How to take advantage of real time to make the stock management efficient
Implementing modern inventory management requires the use of a real-time data platform and specialized tools for managing views, projects and configurations such as Mia‑Platform Fast Data and Mia‑Platform Console.
With these tools, it is possible to connect to the warehouse management software to track and manage the movement of goods. You can aggregate data on different levels, for example, depending on the warehouse, production batch, a specific brand, and so on. In addition, you can also aggregate data per day, week, month, quarter, year, and so on.
The data of stocks and movements aggregated in Single View and made accessible via APIs, can therefore be used by different touchpoints and applications. This is the case of business intelligence, e-commerce systems, or SAP ERP components for inventory management. The availability of aggregated data in real time makes it possible to activate alarms in case of unforeseen events or delays that have an impact on the company activities. The APIs allow you to feed the CMS Mia‑Platform Backoffice to quickly and intuitively view the Single Views containing information on products and stock availability and possibly trigger the appropriate automatic actions.
The advantages of Single Views powered by real-time data
Having the data relating to inventory management in real time helps to make the warehouse efficient and turn it into a valuable asset for business initiatives. The unique views allow you to perform business intelligence operations by processing up-to-date statistics on the handled products, analyze the turnover of goods, and understand which products are sold in a specific territory or in particular periods. The real-time capabilities allow you to have data updated at the instant of query, without the inaccuracies that normally afflict data that depend on periodic synchronizations.
Take a look at this case history to see the potential of automation and real-time data in the retail industry.
An efficient management of goods movement, guided by data updated in real time, allows you to sell online via e-commerce or app, guaranteeing the availability of products. Through the connection with the management system it becomes possible to make inventories at any time, with the frequency required by business needs, even every day or several times a day.
In summary, the real-time data aggregation capabilities of a platform such as Mia‑Platform Fast Data not only allow the optimization of inventory management, but also support data-driven business initiatives, while helping to improve the customer experience.
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