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IntelligentFulfillment Today’s omni-channel world means offering personalizedproducts and services, without losing sight of profitmargins. JDA’s integrated, cloud-based supply chainplanning and execution solution helps companiesserve “me commerce” demand profitably.

Balancing serviceand profitabilityin an omni-channel worldWhile virtually every company is increasing itsinvestments in omni-channel selling, very fewbusinesses are earning a return. Caught in arat race to satisfy ever-changing consumerpreferences, companies are paying a highprice to sustain or grow their market share.In fact, according to a recent study conductedfor JDA Software by PwC, only 16 percent ofcompanies can fulfill omni-channel demandprofitably today.

What’s eroding margins as businesses sell anddeliver products across multiple channels? It’ssimple: the high cost of fulfilling orders. A full 67percent of companies in JDA’s study reported thatthese costs are growing, not shrinking, as theyincrease their focus on selling across channels.The increasing complexity of today’s fulfillmentnetworks is becoming cost-prohibitive for manybusinesses — especially when end consumersplace orders for individual products or smallquantities, compared to the orders placed bytraditional channel partners. Handling returnsand shipping to the store for customer pick-upalso represent huge cost centers.Understanding the true cost of fulfillmentIt’s no surprise that the emergence of omni-channelselling has created a plethora of planning anddistribution challenges not just for retailers, but alsofor manufacturers, wholesale distributors andthird-party logistics providers. In the face ofincreasing competition and rising demand volatility,companies often make ambitious price/product/service offers in order to win the sale — withoutconsidering the true cost of fulfilling those offers.By making fulfillment decisions without a holisticview of inventory, labor and transportationavailability and costs, companies often sacrificelong-term profitability in service to short-termcustomer satisfaction. Frequent expedites, excessinventory, transfer costs, suboptimal freights andmismatched labor skillsets — each of theseinefficiencies has a direct impact on the bottom line.For example, if there isn’t enough labor at thedistribution center to unload inbound shipmentsfor a planned promotion, companies have to choosebetween costly overtime and lost sales. If ordermanagement and transportation managementsystems are not linked, carriers may be frequentlyshipping less-than-full truckloads to the samelocation. If the planning process lacks visibilityinto upstream and downstream order and inventoryinformation, the supply chain cannot respondquickly when the unexpected occurs — leavingplans both out-of-date and un-executable.This leads to overstocks, out-of- stocks anddissatisfied customers.How can companies ensure that their planning andexecution decisions are synchronized to makeintelligent, profitable distribution and fulfillmentdecisions? How can they gain real-time visibilityinto orders, in-transits, on-hand inventory andnear-term events across the supply chain? How canthey satisfy customized “me commerce” demandwithout losing sight of their own financial targets?Enter JDA Intelligent FulfillmentTM.The JDA IntelligentFulfillment solutionJDA Intelligent Fulfillment is anintegrated, cloud-based solutionthat combines best-of-breedfunctionality with thoughtleadership, global best practicesand partnerships with leadingproviders of complementaryservices and technology. JDA’slong-term strategy is focused ongoing beyond software functionalityto help customers leverage bestpractices and high-impact systemintegration — enabling them totransform fulfillment into a truecompetitive advantage.

While the end-to-end visibility enabled bytechnology is critical, just as important is optimizingprocesses across the supply chain. Only then cancompanies achieve the profitable resiliency theyneed to survive, and even thrive, in today’s volatileomni-channel environment.To support that level of game-changingperformance, JDA Intelligent Fulfillment holistically,iteratively and profitably solves inventory planning,replenishment and order fulfillment challenges. Byleveraging the power of JDA Intelligent Fulfillment,companies can: Integrate order management with other keysystems, such as warehouse management andtransportation management, to considerfulfillment costs and ensure that all customerpromises are profitable Implement customer-centric segmentationstrategies, providing differentiated servicelevels to end consumers that are optimizedfor profitability Make profitable distribution decisions based onreal-time visibility into inventory, orders andevents Seamlessly react to events and disruptions withiterative planning and execution Reduce inventory, labor and transportation costswhile improving on-time, in-full customerdeliveries — creating profitable operations and acompetitive advantage Profitably deliver on omni-channel promises tofulfill customer orders where, when and howcustomers want them Leverage cloud deployment for optimal agility,visibility, consistency and return on investment

Profitable order fulfillmentJDA Intelligent Fulfillment considers real-worldfulfillment and distribution costs as part of thecustomer ordering process. This capability, whichis made possible by integrating IBM’s best-in-classCommerce and Order Management solutions,ensures that customer promises will result insupply-chain profitability. By synchronizing ordercapture and management with labor optimization,as well as fulfillment and distribution management,companies can see the true cost of offering aspecific product/price/delivery combination —before an offer is made.By linking customers’ product and deliverypreferences with real-time information on inventory,labor and transportation availability, companies canoffer only those promises which make good businesssense. Offers such as “pick up in store” and “ship tostore,” which provide the flexibility customersdemand today, can be made with confidence thatcosts will be minimized.Just as important, integrating those customerfulfillment preferences into upstream planninghelps ensure that inventory is staged accuratelyacross the network in the future. This destinationdriven demand capability ensures that the truesource of demand is captured properly for futureplanning purposes — even when the path topurchase is complex.For example, when shoppers can’t find a productin the store, typically it’s ordered from a fulfillmentcenter. While traditional systems track this demandonly as far as the fulfillment center, JDA links it tothe specific store, so that the product can bereplenished there.This powerful JDA solution also manages returns,which represent one of the largest cost centers forany company. Because warehouses typically lackvisibility into incoming returns, labor is oftenunavailable to process them. Products languish andmargins erode. JDA’s returns authorization processalerts the warehouse to expect returns, so productsare quickly available to promise.

Demand: The true driver of fulfillmentMaking profitable fulfillment and distributiondecisions begins with creating a single, enterprisewide, demand-shaping forecast based on omnichannel customer order data — augmented withprice, promotion and event information. By providingaccess to information about all customer orders,across channels, JDA delivers insights that go wellbeyond traditional point-of-sale (POS) data.This holistic view of demand must be integratedwith real-time insights into execution constraintsacross the supply chain, including warehouses andtransportation networks. This allows companiesto schedule the right number of associates withthe right skills to fulfill orders; secure appropriatelevels of transportation capacity to match expectedshipments; and create time-phased, realisticreplenishment plans for inventory, laborand transportation.Just as important, integratingthose customer fulfillmentpreferences into upstreamplanning helps ensure thatinventory is staged accuratelyacross the network in thefuture. This destinationdriven demand capabilityensures that the true sourceof demand is capturedproperly for future planningpurposes — even when thepath to purchase is complex.