Jos A. Bank, were an early adopter of cross-channel order processing.  Store associates at Jos A. Bank have access to the inventory positions in their other retail locations via MICROS-Retail’s Tradewind Point of Sale and to their direct commerce operation utilizing MICROS-Retail’s CWDirect Order Management System, all from their point of sale terminal.  As an example, a store associates can place an order against direct commerce inventory and that order will seamlessly flow through the fulfillment process as if it came directly from the customer.

Title Nine Sports is using MICROS-Retail’s Cross-channel Inventory Broker (Locate).  Title Nine Sports can identify inventory in alternative channels and have those items reserved against demand.  Those orders will be shipped to the customers’ home, office or gift recipient or set aside at their appropriate retail location for store pick-up.

MICROS-Retail Locate’s Order Broker module has system controlled business rules that determine where a product can be picked and shipped from.   Prior to Order Broker a user had to manage all the decisions.  Order Broker has decision rules for checking to see if there is a purchase order that will come in within days at the distribution center, the location that has the most inventory, stores which are not available for picking (e.g. new store), and determine where to ship the product from. Once this is done the appropriate order picking and shipping documents are produced to fulfill the customer’s request.

So let me ask you this – are you taking full advantage of your total inventory position to satisfy your customers and achieve a higher order and item fill rates?

Paul Sobota is a Vice President with F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; Learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com.

1. When considering replacing your software application, ask yourself the following questions during the due diligence process:

• What applications will be considered, and what functions are required?
• What are the major milestones and time frames necessary to complete the project?
• What’s the total cost of ownership necessary to complete the project?

2. When asking a vendor to submit a formal proposal, include all the vital information necessary to receive a detailed proposal. For example, in the case of an order management system, vital information includes, among other things:

• Peak and average figures for the number of concurrent users;
• Order volumes by month, with the peak week;
• Average lines and units per order; and the
• Number of customer records.

This information isn’t only necessary in identifying the licensing, but also the proper sizing for application and database servers.

3. Analyze the vendor proposal painstakingly. For items such as training and implementation services, understand the number of days being proposed and what roles or tasks will be performed by the vendor. Be careful of terminology like “the normal training days are X” or “the standard project management days are X.” Make sure the “typical” or “standard” days are sufficient for your project.

4. Understand the vendors’ license maintenance and support plans and when payment is due. Many vendors charge these fees once the application is delivered. Some maintenance plans can be as high as 20 percent of the MSRP or originally proposed license fees.

5. From an application licensing perspective, review the pricing model and any optional modules that may be necessary to support the functionality within your business. If the vendor is supplying the hardware for the application and database servers, be certain the hardware is sufficient and budgeted for, including the necessary hardware upgrades if optional modules are added later or if the licensing forces the hardware into major upgrades.

6. For program modifications or integrations to other software applications, provide functional specifications for the vendor to submit a formal proposal. While the vendor responses may only be estimates, the more detailed the specifications, the better a vendor can estimate the expenses. Don’t wait until after the project is approved to get these expenses.

7. So far these expenses have focused on vendors’ costs and haven’t addressed planning for internal expenses. Be careful, because internal expenses are usually less budgeted for and can lead to project overruns very quickly.

Travel expenses are one example of internal expenses to potentially budget for. It’s often necessary to travel to and from vendors’ facilities, as well as travel expenses for the vendor to be on-site. These expenses can be as high as 15 percent to 18 percent of the total services for the project. Be aware, some vendors charge a travel fee if the travel is over a certain number of hours or they charge cost plus 2 percent to 3 percent.

Other internal expenses to consider budgeting for include:

• an increase in payroll or overtime to complete the project;
• the hiring of temporary labor or outside resources, such as consultants or programmers; and
• upgrades to other network hardware or the rewiring of the internal network.

Formalize a full budget before proceeding, being sure to build in sufficient dollars for items such as services, programming and training that may not have been sufficiently budgeted for by the vendor. By clearly defining your budget, you can avoid being one of the 49 percent who exceed their IT budgets.

MICROS-Retail is continuing to further enhance their retail integration from Xstore Point of Sale System to the CWSerenade Order Management System.  This now gives the prospective multichannel retailer a software suite that can handle web commerce (Fry or eOneCommerce), catalog and other direct marketing sales (CWSerenade), and retail store sales (Xstore) from one combined package offering that is supported with one database for all sales channels transactions and a single view of a customer’s purchases across these channels.

I believe that these offerings paired with MICROS-Retail’s Locate application will enable any sales associate to save a sale by being able to look up inventory availability across all sales channels as well as in the warehouse, capture where the available inventory is located, and have it shipped straight to the customer.  What retailer wouldn’t be pleased to be able to say to the customer, “I am sorry we are out of that dress in your size but I can have it shipped directly to you or brought into the store from one of our other locations”? Now that is great customer service and will save the sale!

Interested in what is available to multichannel businesses right now in the way of functionality, I asked Chris if he could share what are some of the new features available in the V2.0 CWSerenade order management.  Here’s what he had to say:

• RF functionality for put away, transfers, replenishment and returns. (Soon to be available in Version 2.5 will be additional functionality for receiving and physical inventory)

• Additional promotional offerings by category of merchandise, ability to capture multiple source codes at the order header level to assist with the determination of how this customer actually got to the website in addition to any source code that may have been generated by the website for shipping discount or other website promotion.

• Ability to assign specific pricing to a customer or a customer group

• Expanded quantity price matrix pricing levels and functionality

• Pack verification by carton with associated manifesting tracking number

NOTE: MICROS-Retail will be releasing Version 2.5 in November of this year.

I believe that all of these system functions that are currently available in CWSerenade Version 2.0 improves the overall customer shopping experience and are extremely valuable in improving the client’s brand image and their ability to service their customers.

Lastly, Chris and I talked about some of the most recent implementations for MICROS-Retail. I asked if we could list a few for this blog, and here they are:

• Costume SuperCenter – eOne Commerce and CWSerenade

• SmileMakers – eOne Commerce and CWSerenade

• Chelsea & Scott – CWSerenade

• Pendleton Woolen Mills – Fry

• Boston Proper – Fry

You can find more information about MICROS-Retail and their available applications (both order management software and point of sale) on their website, www.micros-retail.com, or you can contact Chris Sarne via email or call him at 610-565-3163.

Paul Sobota is a Vice President with F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; Learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com.