Omnichannel Sales and Inventory Management: Which Software for Retail?

In the retail sector, implementing an omnichannel strategy comes with specific challenges: synchronizing inventory across all sales channels, efficiently managing returns, optimizing stock allocation, and personalizing offers at every customer touchpoint. Addressing these challenges allows businesses to streamline operations, elevate the customer experience, and boost sales in a highly competitive omnichannel landscape.

Challenges of Omnichannel Sales

Omnichannel Retail: A Necessary Evolution

Shifting consumer habits have reshaped the retail landscape, pushing businesses to embrace innovative strategies such as omnichannel sales. By seamlessly blending digital and physical touchpoints, this approach ensures a cohesive and effortless customer experience.

Customers may begin their journey browsing products on a brand’s website, seek personalized advice via chat or phone, complete their purchase online or in-store, and then choose between home delivery or in-store pickup. This seamless integration of sales channels reflects the demands of increasingly connected and discerning customers.

Today, the retail sector is fully immersed in the “phygital” era, where physical and digital experiences merge to create immersive and tailored shopping journeys. As customer paths become increasingly intricate, retailers must adapt quickly to retain their competitive advantage.

…but a headache for inventory management

While digitalization offers new opportunities, it can quickly complicate matters regarding inventory management. With increasingly connected and demanding consumers, the pressure on logistics is at an all-time high. A Statista Consumer Insights study shows that 44% of French internet users returned an online purchase in the last 12 months. Roughly one in four products bought online is returned, requiring constant adjustments to stock levels and increasing complexity within the supply chain. Furthermore, shoppers are quick to turn to a competitor in the event of a stockout, risking lost revenue and growing customer dissatisfaction.

To meet this logistical challenge, retailers must implement strategies to optimize operations and improve the customer experience. This requires better stock coordination between physical stores, warehouses, and online sales channels, as well as the use of advanced technological tools to effectively anticipate and manage demand fluctuations.

Inventory management: the benefits of omnichannel software

In inventory management, the goal is to optimize processes to drive sales. By ensuring product availability, logistics play a key role in increasing profits and customer satisfaction. Inventory management software that fully integrates omnichannel sales provides the essential tools to achieve this objective.

Adaptability: making data your ally

In retail, implementing an omnichannel strategy is now essential to meet the needs of connected consumers. At the heart of this strategy, a retail SaaS platform serves as the central pillar, enabling the collection and centralization of data a true goldmine for effective inventory management.

Data is a powerful ally for sports stores, offering indispensable reactivity and adaptability. With inventory management software designed for omnichannel operations, businesses remain agile in the face of demand fluctuations and can easily respond to new market trends. The ability to quickly anticipate and adapt to changes is a genuine competitive advantage.

Furthermore, the ability to analyze a store’s performance in depth through the software allows for internal process optimization and improved operational efficiency. This global view of the activity offers a deep understanding of stock flows, sales trends, and customer behaviors, enabling informed and strategic decision-making.

Improving omnichannel logistics processes

Inventory management software offers numerous benefits, starting with a significant reduction in delivery times. For consumers who are no longer willing to wait, this not only boosts satisfaction but also optimizes logistics costs. By integrating all sales channels into the software, retailers benefit from streamlined, error-free, and better-coordinated management across different distribution points.

Stock accuracy is also enhanced through the software, allowing for real-time stock visibility and effective product categorization using the ABC method. This classification quickly identifies overstock or stockouts, facilitating stock balancing and order management.

Product traceability is also strengthened, providing total visibility of each item’s journey from reception to delivery. Automating order management and procurement processes results in considerable time savings and a reduction in human error.

Finally, inventory management software allows for more precise sales forecasting, making procurement planning and stock level management much easier. Ultimately, using such a tool offers global optimization of business processes and contributes to efficient, high-performance omnichannel logistics.

Optimizing the customer experience

Using omnichannel inventory management software helps unify, harmonize, and personalize the customer experience. By effectively meeting the challenges of omnichannel store fulfillment, the user’s shopping experience is greatly improved, as they gain access to a wider range of products and enjoy a more seamless and personalized journey.

Inventory management software also facilitates the rollout of new services, which are essential for enriching the customer experience and boosting loyalty, particularly in sports retail. Click & Collect orders, home delivery, online eReservations for a repair workshop appointment… the store can renew its offer and meet the evolving needs of its customers.

5 criteria for choosing your omnichannel inventory software

1. Product reference

A product reference system is indispensable in omnichannel inventory management software for sports stores because it centralizes and standardizes all information related to the products sold.

• Automation of data entry tasks: Significant time savings when indexing your offer.
• Centralization of product data: Essential information such as descriptions, technical specs, images, and prices is held in one place.
• Standardization of information: All product data is consistent and up-to-date across all sales channels (POS, website, mobile apps, etc.).
• Management of variants and sizes: With broad product ranges (sizes, colors, models), a product reference allows you to effectively manage these variations and ensure clear visibility of each variant’s availability.
• Improved search and navigation: Customers can easily navigate your product catalog, which improves the shopping experience and promotes conversion.

2. Management and 360° vision

Omnichannel inventory software must offer a range of features dedicated to monitoring stock levels based on real-time market conditions.

• Purchasing, receiving, stocks, and inventory
• Real-time stock movements
• Unified management of online and offline stocks
• Order book management
• Pre-season orders
• Automatic replenishment, ideal stock levels, and balancing
• Inventories
• Traceability
• Statistical analysis

The goal is to optimize the entire supply chain while pooling sales and distribution channels to ultimately improve the shopping experience. Statistical analysis and Business Intelligence are paramount for informed management and store growth.

3. The omnichannel journey

To create an effective omnichannel customer journey in a sports store, it is crucial to rely on unified inventory management and a functional scope adapted to market trends.

For example:

• Assortment management to facilitate customer search and selection (cross-selling, up-selling, etc.).
• Management of online reservations, whether for reserving a product in-store or booking a maintenance slot in a repair workshop (bikes or skis).
• Click & Collect management, which integrates real-time stock to guarantee product availability at pickup a service highly valued by customers who finalize their purchase in-store.
• In-store returns and exchanges management, ensuring a fast and transparent procedure to improve customer satisfaction.

4. Software interconnection

Software openness is essential because it enables real-time synchronization of the data circulating within a store. Connecting via API to other business tools (CRM, WMS, etc.) or sales channels (such as an e-commerce site) accelerates all processes and optimizes inventory management for a better customer experience.

Some examples of essential interconnections:

• When a customer makes an in-store purchase, the inventory software must be interconnected with the POS software to automatically update stock levels in real-time. This prevents stockouts and ensures accurate visibility of product availability.
• When a customer purchases online, the inventory software must be interconnected with the e-commerce store to update stock levels, manage in-store reservations, and offer options like Click & Collect. This ensures a consistent customer experience regardless of the sales channel used.
• Interconnected inventory software can be integrated with marketing and loyalty tools to personalize discounts and promotions, product recommendations, and loyalty programs based on customer buying behavior.
• Interconnection with suppliers and logistics partners allows for automated order management, procurement, and deliveries, optimizing the supply chain and reducing delivery times.

5. Specialized business software

By definition, inventory management software designed for a specific industry is better equipped to meet that market’s unique challenges. In sports retail, this includes features that account for:

• Product seasonality,
• Collections,
• Extensive product ranges,
• Discounts and promotions…
  All of these factors directly influence stock levels.

Key points to remember for choosing sports retail software adapted to omnichannel sales:

• To meet the challenge, sports retailers must rely on inventory management that takes into account the specificities of new consumption trends. Pooling sales channels, synchronizing information, and strategic demand analysis are prerequisites for maximizing sales in the omnichannel era.

• Based on data collection and centralization, omnichannel sales management software fosters business adaptability to market fluctuations, improves logistics processes and overall performance, and optimizes the customer experience.

• The 5 functional criteria for choosing your omnichannel inventory management software: product reference, 360° management and vision, omnichannel journey management, software interconnection, and industry specialization.