Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium

Modular services included

Promising

The Promising service provides estimated delivery dates with sub-second response times while improving delivery accuracy through business-defined sourcing decisions and fulfillment constraints.

Key capabilities include:

• Multiple delivery and pickup options
• Earliest delivery date estimation
• Shipment minimization
• Business-driven sourcing decisions

Inventory

The Inventory service provides real-time inventory visibility and inventory control capabilities to maximize inventory utilization and improve availability across all selling channels.

Key capabilities include:

• Global inventory visibility
• Inventory transparency across distributed systems
• Improved inventory utilization and allocation
• Reduced stockouts and overpromising

Deterministic optimization

The Deterministic optimization feature of the Optimization modular service improves fulfillment outcomes through rules-based cost optimization using static business variables.

Optimization objectives include:

• Minimize shipping costs
• Balance fulfillment node capacity
• Minimize processing costs
• Optimize delivery speed

For more information about these features, see Optimization objectives.

Predictive optimization

The Predictive optimization feature extends fulfillment decisioning through AI and ML-driven optimization models that evaluate probabilistic outcomes and continuously improve sourcing recommendations.

Unlike deterministic optimization, which relies on static rules, predictive optimization incorporates historical data and behavioral patterns to optimize fulfillment decisions before and after order placement.

Key capabilities include:

Prepurchase and post-purchase predictive optimization

Analyze historical fulfillment behavior and predict order outcomes to improve sourcing and fulfillment decisions before and after order execution. For more formation about cost-based optimization and promising capabilities, see Cost-based promising.

Cost driver optimization

Predict fulfillment costs and recommend cost-efficient sourcing decisions by evaluating:

• Carrier services
• Transit rates
• Shipping costs
• Processing costs
• Node balancing costs

Reduce stockouts and markdowns

Incorporate predictive inventory intelligence into fulfillment calculations to reduce inventory loss and improve sell-through performance. For more information about stockouts avoidance and markdowns avoidance, see Optimization objective: Avoiding stockouts and Optimization objective: Avoiding markdowns.

Optimize node performance (Preview)

Improve fulfillment execution by predicting network performance characteristics and recommending better node utilization strategies.

AI explainability

Provide visibility into sourcing decisions by exposing how cost drivers and predictive models influence fulfillment outcomes.

Accelerated data ingestion

Includes file transfer capabilities to accelerate ingestion of operational data for AI model processing and optimization. For more information, see Data ingestion.

Business outcomes

By combining the promising, inventory, and optimization services, including the deterministic optimization, and predictive optimization features, Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium enables organizations to:

Move from reactive to predictive fulfillment

Anticipate fulfillment outcomes and optimize sourcing decisions before operational issues occur.

Minimize cost-to-serve

Continuously balance service levels and operational efficiency using AI-driven cost optimization.

Reduce inventory risk

Lower inventory losses by proactively reducing stockouts and avoiding unnecessary markdown events.

Improve fulfillment performance

Increase sourcing accuracy and improve delivery outcomes using predictive decision intelligence.

Increase decision transparency

Understand and visualize how fulfillment recommendations are generated through explainable AI and business cost drivers.

Deployment options

The Sterling Intelligent Promising container offering is also available through the IBM Sterling Order Management enterprise container license. For more information, see Enabling the Premium feature in containers.

This deployment option includes access to all core modular services:

• Promising
• Inventory
• Optimization (Deterministic optimization)

Advanced predictive optimization capabilities are available as an optional add-on through the Sterling Intelligent Promising hybrid container license, enabling AI and ML-driven fulfillment and inventory optimization scenarios.

Watch this video to learn about the capabilities of Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium edition.