Optimising consumer experience and profitability in an omni-channel world

Legacy companies have found it challenging to make the shift from a traditional offline distribution model to an omni-channel business environment. And even those who have made the shift have significant room for optimising their inventories and operations across channels.

Unlike new-age companies, many legacy corporations have inefficient inventory levels across multiple channels rather than nimbler distributed warehousing & logistics shared across different online and offline distribution channels.

Image courtesy — bit.ly/3xIxigy

Making operations efficient across multiple distribution channels requires real-time data collection and nimbleness in response.

According to Gartner, companies that use real-time data are 33% more likely to succeed in their industries.

Legacy companies find it hard to redesign their traditional ERP systems for an omni-channel environment. However, many SAAS Startups are making it easy with their real-time data extraction and transformation, wherein manual reporting is no longer required. New-age brands like Myntra, Amazon, Meesho, Ajio, Flipkart, and many more use real-time insights and monitoring, which helps them optimise their operations and inventory, thus improving their profitability.

Need for Control Tower — an imperative for winning the omni-channel game.

From raw materials to the “last-mile” delivery of products to customers, businesses struggle with fragmented visibility due to lack of a single source of truth and resultant synchronisation challenges. The only way is to have an effective Control Tower which helps enterprises get a consolidated view of their activities across different constituents of their omni-channel supply chain.

While various ready to use services have reduced go-live time for online/omni retailing drastically, there is one challenge which continued, that is of sewing the data generated by different service providers together & making it actionable in the form of alerts & reports.

“Omnivio has helped us create the single view to gauge the post order supply chain health at management level & at the same time creating alerts to take action for operations teams at the warehouses & shipping partners’ level. Their integrations with most of the couriers and wms made deployment easy & swift and helped us get over google sheet based reporting, reducing the analysis & action time” — Supertails

Multi-party synchronisation

The fragmented logistics and warehousing industry in India means that information is fragmented across the channels. Most of this information may still be collated via e-mails, phone calls and WhatsApp. In addition, critical components of the supply chain, including delivery collection, warehouse, and order management systems, all use different information databases, which makes synchronising and real-time response extremely difficult.

For optimising inventory and operations across multiple channels requires far higher level of synchronisation than just the traditional offline channels. Control Towers and omni-channel platforms help companies quickly and effectively transition to omni-channel.

“Omnivio’s Control Tower simplified data collection for multiple brands, marketplaces and tech-touch points. The self serve Control Tower dashboard developed is easy to understand & interactive. The CXO dashboard covering Inventory views and regional Inventory utilisation basis sales has been very useful to reduce complex inventory operations into simple tasks” — Mensa Brands

Demand forecasting is key to inventory optimization in an omni-channel world

In an omni-channel environment, it is not certain if the consumer will check the product on mobile and buy from an offline store, or if he/she will check the product in an offline store and then research on the web from the office and finally order it online from home via a mobile app. And so, where does the brand stock the product? If more inventory is kept at the stores, there could be a stockout in online stores. And if more goods are stored in warehouses/micro-warehouses then there could be stockouts at stores.

To be omni-channel ready, brands need the nimbleness to dynamically move stock from nearby micro-warehouses to where the need is — either in offline stores, or dark stores of quick-commerce players or to fulfilment centres from where e-commerce fulfilment partners can service the demand.

“Sustainable growth is the focus, and to manage unplanned demand spurts in growth (due to promotions like Shark Tank et, al.), we started working on demand forecasting and inventory optimization. This amazing software from Omnivio has been instrumental in not just monitoring inventory turnaround and management, but also for tracking impressions, conversions and optimizing ROAS (return on Ad spend) — D’chica Fashion Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd.

Featured Solution:

Omnivio — an omni-channel visibility and optimization SAAS platform.

Omnivio is a SAAS control centre. With Omnivio, customers can manage and automate supply chain workflow operations with a plug-and-play cloud-based control tower that gives them a complete picture of their supply chain.

Omnivio Website — https://omnivio.io/

Their single view of business operations helps brands effectively monitor supply chain and business across channels instantly in one place, thus saving cost and time. This further allows businesses to focus on core operations while leveraging the expertise of logistics partners like Omnivio, maintaining visibility and control through effective collaboration and communication.

Continuous improvement is the key in supply chain management. Regular assessments, feedback loops, and technology updates contribute to organisational success. Omnivio can provide end-to-end solutions to manage the supply chain and help to open the doors to growth.

Omnivio is used by new-age leaders SuperTails, Mensa Brands, Meesho, Mensa Brands, Northladder, Redchief, D’chica, Rashki, Rubans, etc.

“As D2C brands go Multi-and Omni-channel, ‘selling on marketplaces, own websites, stores, Qcommerce et al’, a single view of business-ops is critical for growth and profitability. An Omni channel Control Tower is a critical piece of tech-stack, providing visibility and orchestration across channels and stakeholders” — Sidhartha Bhimania, Co-Founder Omnivio.

About Caret Capital

Caret Capital is a sustainability fund that invests across Mobility, Distribution and Employment.

Caret 360 is the CXO community initiated by Caret Capital to help startups and industries discover each other.