Supply Chain Solutions for Retail
Powerful solutions to help accelerate processes, improve visibility, and exceed customer expectations
Intelligent supply chain solutions for a hyper-paced,
hyper-competitive world.
For over a century, the retail industry experienced little change. Some great visionaries precipitated massive transformations in operations, while cars and technology advances accelerated the evolution of stores and shopping preferences. But for the most part, the pace of change was relatively slow.
Then came the Internet and eCommerce, which completely revolutionized shoppers’ habits and the retail industry. Tiny disruptors grew into global powerhouses, changing the ways consumers shop and forever altering how – and when – they expect to receive their goods.
The old concept of a single store or chain where consumers walk in the door and walk out with their purchase has become a quaint memory. The old mail order catalogs that promised delivery weeks are an amusing artifact from the past. Today’s consumer wants everything now. And in retail terms, now is yesterday and tomorrow happened this morning – before you even got out of bed.
In this hyper-paced world of commerce, with goods flying not just off the shelves, but around the globe, you need powerful supply chain tools – intelligent, AI-powered supply chain technology – that keeps you at least one step ahead.
Online stores have changed the way retail delivers. And consumers are buying it.
Changing customer expectations are blurring channel boundaries. Consumers want to find whatever they want, wherever they look for it, all of the time. Omnichannel shopping is the name of the game, as online monoliths push brick-and-mortar retailers out of the marketplace.
To survive, innovative retailers are retooling their operations to more effectively compete with aggressive online disruptors.
Your industry challenges include:
- Meeting consumer demand for flexible, flawless omnichannel experiences
- Expectation of fast delivery and easy returns
- The expectation of real-time inventory visibility
- Lack of end-to-end visibility across the supply chain
- Cost and complexity of supporting omnichannel
- Fulfillment costs are eating away at profitability
- Suppliers and partners at lower levels of technology
- Enormous volumes of relevant structured and unstructured data – including social media – that is difficult to integrate and analyze
- Keeping up with rapid change and responding quickly when needed
Supply chain technology enables you to:
- Monitor and manage inventory so it can be adjusted quickly to meet demand
- Engage in faster transaction processing to ensure speed of delivery
- Provide consumers with instant access to product availability details
- Supply fast, trackable fulfillment/delivery services
- Better understand and act upon customer feedback, social media, and other unstructured data
- Communicate quickly with supply chain partners
- Digitize and automate communications with smaller business partners
- Make instantaneous changes based on real-time insights
Digital supply chain solutions for retailers.
Lightwell offers supply chain services and solutions specifically tailored to the retail industry. We create reliable, end-to-end systems drawing from our own proprietary solutions plus those offered by our partner, IBM. Together, we deliver advanced capabilities so you can more effectively manage your retail supply chain to help deliver the perfect order, every time.
With extensive experience in the retail industry, we know your challenges, and we know how to resolve them. We’ve spent years helping organizations like yours work toward a seamless, digital supply chain that ensures appropriate inventory levels, and the ability to pivot quickly whenever market forces demand immediate action.
Now, with the advent of AI, machine learning, and blockchain, we can make your complex retail ecosystem function more efficiently, and with greater confidence.
Explore our comprehensive supply chain services to learn how we can help. Learn about some the supply chain solutions we can help you leverage and optimize them for your industry.
IBM Sterling Supply Chain Business Network
Connect with your business partners quickly and securely. Share real-time, accurate visibility with your entire retail supply chain. Leverage AI and blockchain technology to optimize processes and outcomes.
IBM Sterling B2B Integrator
This high-speed, high-volume, and highly secure collaboration engine accelerates B2B processes and partner transactions, and establishes more productive, promising collaborative relationships.
IBM Sterling Order Management
This order management solution helps you orchestrate complex orders across your entire fulfillment network and deliver great omnichannel customer experiences. It helps you orchestrate orders from all channels in real-time from inception to delivery, and automates processes and data connected to the order as it moves through its life cycle.
IBM Sterling Inventory Control Tower
This AI-powered solution enables your team to easily see and manage your inventory, wherever it is, and respond quickly to changing needs. It helps you detect and understand events that could impact your inventory, prioritize and resolve critical issues in real-time, take the right actions to prevent disruption, and leverage best practices to improve outcomes.
Lightwell B2B Visibility Portal
Lightwell B2B Visibility Portal provides unprecedented visibility into transactions, so you can see exactly what’s happening across your B2B operations and supply chain. This solution enables business users to identify and mitigate problems without the need for IT involvement.
IBM Sterling Transaction Manager
Eliminate paper documents without requiring any process changes from your partners. This is particularly helpful with smaller business partners that have technological challenges.
Illuminating Resources
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Whatever industry you’re in, we can help through our end-to-end supply chain services and innovative solutions.
Contact us to explore about how we can help you overcome your supply chain management challenges and advance your supply chain capabilities for the future.