Checkout

After a shopper finalizes the items to purchase and adds them to the cart, they are directed to the checkout phase. During the checkout phase, the shopper selects their preferred delivery speed and fulfillment option.

The shopper selects either the minimize shipments or the earliest delivery fulfillment options for each item in their cart. Based on the shopper's selection, IBM® Sterling Intelligent Promising calculates the sourcing solutions for each item. For more information, see the Calculate pre-purchase shipment assignments using finite capacity windows (Checkout assignment) API.

The checkout calculations consider multiple factors that include:
  • Requested delivery method
  • Maximum shipping SLA days
  • Carrier service calendar
  • Inventory level for both on-hand and future availability across the node in the fulfillment network
  • Number of cart lines
  • Other sourcing constraints
Sterling Intelligent Promising provides you with the following options when you use the Checkout assignment API:
  • SLA-based promising
  • Cost-based promising

The shipping service level agreement (SLA) option is optimized on the earliest delivery. For more information, see SLA-based checkout. The cost based promising option provides an estimated shipment solution that is based on the cost to fulfill. For more information see Cost-based checkout.

Support for on-hand and future availability

When inquiring about checkout shipment estimates, Sterling Intelligent Promising considers both on-hand and future inventory at all stores in the network. The fulfillment solution is derived from the optimal delivery time and fulfillment cost. Then, the fulfillment solution that is provided can be divided further by both the shipment and pickup fulfillment methods that are called SHIP or PICK.

When the Checkout assignment API is presented with multiple cart lines in the request, the system determines the earliest availability of the item and sourcing constraints are eliminated automatically. Finally, if cost-based checkout is used, the cost is refined further to achieve the lowest cost delivery while still meeting the shipping SLA requirements.

The system prioritizes on-hand availability to determine shipping solutions as they are available immediately for fulfillment. In some scenarios, the checkout assignment might suggest a future date for items that are presented in the future from an allocated, supply, purchase order.

Example: Multi-line order checkout estimates with on-hand and future availability

Consider the scenario where a shopper is planning to purchase a game console and a pre-order video game that is available a few weeks from today. The shopper creates a cart with:
  • Line1 ItemId=GameConsole Qty:1
  • Line2 ItemId=PreOrderGame Qty:1

At this time, the fulfillment network has on-hand availability for the game console but the pre-order game is only available two weeks from now as per the inbound purchase order from the game distributor.

The checkout solution takes the two line cart and the availability dates of each item into account. If the optimization strategy is based on "earliest delivery" or considerMaxSLADays=false then the solution yields:

  • Shipment1: Line1, GameConsole from Node1 ETA: Today
  • Shipment2: Line2, PreOrderGame from Node 2 ETA: 2 weeks from Today