Cognitive intelligence that helps retailers achieve the lowest fulfillment cost in both pre- and post- purchase scenarios within a more complex fulfillment environment
Fulfillment Optimizer, a part of IBM Sterling® Intelligent Promising, is a cognitive analytic engine which enhances existing order management systems. It provides a “big data brain” to order management and inventory visibility systems that are already in place with retailers who have e-commerce fulfillment capability.
With Fulfillment Optimizer, retailers are better able to understand and act on changes in the market as they occur to perfectly balance protecting margins, using store capacity and meeting delivery expectations. These sourcing decisions can dramatically increase profits, especially during peak periods.
What you get
Fulfillment Optimizer is designed to integrate with your order management system, simplifying the application of advanced analytics and live optimization to your existing capabilities. It is a proven order management platform that provides intelligent fulfillment capabilities – along with real-time order promising and inventory visibility. It easily uses multiple data points to execute optimized fulfillment and promising plans at the lowest cost to serve.
Fulfillment Optimizer helps you understand and evaluate factors impacting fulfillment performance down to the individual stock keeping unit and node level. It can identify and continuously monitor patterns and trends across both normal and peak business periods. It gives you the ability to use inventory at its most profitable price point, prioritizing slow-moving point or obsolete store inventory to support e-commerce demand while improving inventory sell-through.
With Fulfillment Optimizer, you can execute new sourcing decisions in real time to minimize shipping costs. You can also balance across different business priorities based on time of year (peak, non-peak) while reducing cost-to-serve. You’re able to use cognitive capabilities to continuously learn and improve outcomes for omnichannel fulfillment.
With Fulfillment Optimizer, you can optimize transportation costs and service level agreements when selecting the sourcing node. It also provides intelligent weight allocation and intelligent upgrade and downgrade to optimize customer satisfaction and lower costs. Other features include automatic order splitting to reduce costs, the ability to optimize delivery dates and order processing labor rates as part of the calculation to present a full cost picture.