We’re thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of IBM Sterling® Intelligent Promising Premium in May 2024!

Supply chain cost optimization is pivotal for managing expenses efficiently while ensuring a dependable supply chain. Today’s consumers demand transparency and trust throughout their shopping journey. Our innovative solution empowers businesses to leverage data, real-time systems and machine learning (ML), which facilitates a digital transformation from discovery to delivery.

IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium not only incorporates all the features of IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Standard but also integrates AI-powered pre- and post-purchase optimization. This empowers retailers to address fulfillment costs even within complex environments, all through a modern, adaptable platform.

Loaded with an array of features, including a data platform for predictive AI and analytics, integration with generative AI models for predictions and rule recommendations, and built-in data quality and governance leveraging IBM watsonx™ components, our new AI and ML platform caters to the diverse needs of both new and existing customers.

Enhanced AI and ML features:

The following are some of our new AI and ML capabilities:

a. Cancellation or rescheduling cost

By analyzing the cancellation history of a sourcing node in conjunction with inventory data, the AI model predicts the probability of cancellations or rescheduling and calculates the related expenses. These costs are factored into pre-purchase and post-purchase optimization strategies aimed at mitigating the risks of cancellations or rescheduling.

b. Markdown avoidance cost

IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium calculates potential revenue loss resulting from projected markdowns and uses this data for both pre-purchase and post-purchase optimization purposes.

c. Stockout avoidance cost

IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium predicts the monetary loss caused by anticipated stockouts and incorporates this data into pre-purchase and post-purchase optimization processes.

Powerful capabilities for today’s business needs

Explainable AI

To have confidence in AI, comprehension is key. Intelligent Promising Premium offers an Optimization Explainer feature that presents the cost components of each node involved in the order sourcing decision, in real time. This includes an inventory snapshot and other pertinent factors considered during the order-sourcing process.

This feature enhances transparency by explaining why certain shipping nodes were chosen for an order, detailing the variables of each item, and providing a breakdown of costs for both the winning and losing nodes. With real-time data visualization, retailers can delve deeper into their operations, for more informed decision-making.

Customer-driven sustainability

The solution provides visibility into sustainability data, allowing businesses to empower consumers to make sustainable shopping decisions aligned with their personal values. Carbon savings data can be fed to upstream e-commerce experiences for consumers to see the carbon impact of their current shopping choices, as well as potential carbon savings from taking more sustainable actions like delaying shipments or consolidating purchases.

The hallmark of a robust, best-of-breed order management system product lies in its foresight to anticipate future customer investments and changing business needs. It achieves this by offering solutions that not only acknowledge evolving customer aspirations and values but also pave the way for innovation towards a planet-conscious future. IBM strives to maintain its position in the market with state-of-the-art product innovation—please explore our The future of order management ebook to learn more about our point of view.

Benefits

The platform’s built-in Benefits Report helps fulfillment managers measure the effectiveness of their strategies through key performance indicators (KPIs). The fulfillment manager is also provided with shadow KPIs, to compare existing results with those without fulfillment optimization. These shadow views are invaluable in building executive stakeholder confidence in the AI model efficacy, comparing the variable outcomes, and showcasing positive results.

Platform

Businesses are offered the following benefits out of the IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium platform:

• Single data repository for supporting multiple intelligence workloads
• Security and governance dashboard
• Integration with generative AI

Build customer loyalty by fostering transparency and trust

The transformed commerce experience helps in providing increased transparency to the shopper, which is the retailers of today.

Shoppers get real-time product availability, an early expected delivery date on product pages, greater transparency around product availability, pickup or delivery options, greater choices in the checkout experience—with options for sustainability-conscious shoppers—and on-time, accurate order shipment.

On the other hand, fulfillment managers can benefit from the solution through built-in explainability to understand the logic behind “shopper promises” and optimized decisions.

The CFO of the company is presented with “what-if” scenarios that highlight the impact and incremental gains from ML-enhanced decision-making.

Customizable optimization business rules

Our solution currently offers six cost levers to customers to configure their pre-purchase and post-purchase optimizations.

Business teams can optimize their fulfillment operations by adjusting real-world levers—each of these levers can be mapped to a specific business objective. This could be reduction of shipping cost, processing cost, load balancing cost, markdown avoidance, stockout avoidance and node cancellation avoidance.

By defining optimization profiles, a business can align predefined business rules with business levers to make the best fulfillment decisions for business outcomes. For example, consider a scenario where you want to apply optimization by shipping cost based on the seller organization. In this case, you could create an optimization profile that exclusively focuses on optimizing shipping costs when an order’s seller organization is Seller 1.

It gives the business the flexibility to configure different objectives for different lines of business or different omnichannel or geographic locations.

Unlimited business expansion

Are you concerned about potential business expansion through launching new brands, acquiring companies, or venturing into new geographic locations, and are you uncertain about your system’s ability to handle increased data volumes? Look no further. Our composable modern architecture accommodates both organic and non-organic business growth without disruptions.

Conclusion

Excited to explore the capabilities firsthand? Seize the opportunity and start your journey with a 30-day trial of IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Standard. Immerse yourself in the value our Standard product offers to your business and then expand your horizons with what our advanced Premium version has to offer.