IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Platform in IBM Cloud..
Retail Challenges.
In today's world more or less every retailer in the world faced the
following challenges.
- Today customer wants all the product in the cart. If any
product is not available, they will reject the entire cart
- Customer wants to get their product delivered at their door
step in the exact promise date. Customer hate delay in delivery. If
there is any delay they shift their loyality to other retailer.
- Customers are asking for Free Shipping and that even next day!
Increased customer expectations around speed of delivery
- Customer experience is the top priority
What retailer needs?
Retailer needs an intelligent and efficient supply chain to deliver the
product in low cost and a better customer experience and high profit
mergin.
Sterling Intelligent Promising (SIP)
What is Sterling Intelligent Promising (SIP)?
Its a SaaS platform which has 3 serevices.
- Inventory Visibility
- Promising
- Fulfillment Optimizer
All the above 3 service modules are independent but they share a common
single platform (SIP). Some customer may opt for only one service module
or go for all three. That means one retailer can subscribe for only one
servicer or all three or two. this platform is built for an enterprise.
Each service module has a set of public APIs
Inventory Visibility:
Inventory Visisbility (IV) is an independent SaaS module for inventory
management It is the enhanced SaaS version of earlier Global Inventory
Visibility . It has set of public REST API to configrue, update
inventory picture (Supply / Demand) and retrieve availability of any
item in a store/dc or a distribution group.
It has following new features:
- Real time view of store inventory and online inventory
- Visisbility to the entire network of the inventory (OnHand and
Future) for each segment
- Inventory accuaracy for each item and each location and even
for a disribution group
- Configurable rule for safety stock
- Local requirment based on store type
- Inventory Searh
- Inventory Audit
- Reduce carrying costs of safety stock
- Reduce out-of-stock, oversell, and markdown
- Increase conversion rates
- Maps enterprise inventory supply to demand
Product Documentation For IV APSs(
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/intelligent-promising?topic=concepts-inventory-visibility)
Promising:
Promising is a service (SaaS model) in the Sterling Intelligent
Promising platform (SIP). It provides a sets of REST api to access it.
It has following features.
- Shipping costs, service levels and schedules
- Personal Promise Date
- Fulfillment rules and constraints.
- Predicted transit times and reliability
- Transport delivery and pickup dates and time
- Processing capacity
- Flexible fulfillment options
- Labor capacity in each location for each required skill
- Node performance and reliability
It provides personalized promise dates evaluating multiple factors and
their permutations in milliseconds. It can provide reliable dates for
different delivery methods and customer preference to minimize the cost
to serve.
To calculate the promise date it consider the following factors.
- Lead Time
- Node Processing Time
- Fulfillment Rule
- Inventory Mangement
- Shipping Groups
- Node Capacity
Product Documentation For IV APSs(
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/intelligent-promising?topic=concepts-promising)
Optimizer:
Optimizer is a service (SaaS model) in the Sterling Intelligent
Promising platform (SIP). It has a sets of REST api to access it.
Optimization service has been inbuild advanced algorithms for low cost
post purchase fulfillment with balance predefined business rules with
real cost drivers.
It has following features
- Advanced algorithms for post purchase fulfillment
- Keep promise at lowest cost to serve
- Reduces future demand and markdown risk for stores
- Multi objective optimization based on business rule
- Configurable rule-based business goals.
- Decision explainability and reporting
- Node inventory and capacity reliability for fulfillment
You can integrate to Optimization service form your order management
system (e.g. Sterling DOM) .
To integrate with optimization service, you need to implement Get
External Cost for Options user exit. You need to invoke the REST APIs
publised by Optimizer module in the Sterling Intelligent Promising
platform. Invoking the REST APIs are same for all the SasS services
(e.g. IV. Optimizer). First get the token calling authentication API and
then use the token to do the actual REST api/service call.
If your goal is to keep the cost of fulfillment as low as possible IBM
Watson Order Optimizer can help you reduce your total cost to serve, in
real-time
There are 4 types of API in the optimizer service module.
- Configuration API
- Idle API
- Rank API
- Optimization API
Product Documentation For Optimizer APSs( https://www.ibm.com /docs/en/
intelligent-promising? topic=apis-optimization)