Unified stock: offering a seamless customer experience in your stores

With an average out-of-stock rate hovering around 8% and peaking at 10% during promotions, inventory management has become a crucial strategic concern. Out-of-stocks and over-stocks are costly for businesses, and fragmented inventory management results in lost sales, dissatisfied customers, and unnecessary logistical expenses for your stores.

Unified stock is central to the omnichannel journey and unified commerce. This approach centralizes the management of all inventories—whether in-store, in warehouses, or with suppliers—providing real-time visibility over all stock data. 

Imagine a scenario where every customer finds the product they want, exactly when they need it, regardless of the purchase channel. This is the promise of unified stock!

What are the benefits of adopting unified stock?

Reducing stockouts

Implementing unified stock in your business offers an effective way to minimize stockouts. By having real-time visibility into all available inventory, retailers can better anticipate their needs, adjust procurement processes, and bridge the gap between supply and demand. This results in reduced lost sales and increased customer satisfaction, as customers are more likely to find what they are looking for.

In the B2B sector, wholesalers can optimize inventory and prevent stockouts for their professional clients through improved visibility of available stock. Unified stock allows them to monitor stock levels in their warehouses in real time and more accurately predict client needs.

Enhancing customer satisfaction

Unified stock broadens access to products, regardless of the purchase channel. Whether shopping in-store, online, or through hybrid services like ship-from-store and click and collect, customers enjoy a smooth and frustration-free shopping experience. This increased availability helps reduce cart abandonment and boosts customer satisfaction.

In the fashion industry, implementing click and collect is a powerful driver of customer satisfaction, offering flexibility and a seamless purchasing journey. Customers can select items on an eCommerce site and immediately see which store has them available. Once the order is placed, inventory updates to prevent double sales.

Optimizing product offerings

A study by RELEX Solutions found that 45% of retailers see real-time stock visibility as essential for responding to demand fluctuations. 

Unified stock allows retailers to reallocate inventory among different sales channels—stores, warehouses, and eCommerce—reducing dormant stock and optimizing sales. This approach enables quick identification of top-performing products and adjustments to the product offering based on market trends.

Reducing logistical costs

From a logistical perspective, unifying stock serves as a significant optimization tool. It helps reduce storage costs, streamline merchandise flows, and enhance returns management, which is often a source of unnecessary expenses for retailers.

Saving time and improving efficiency

With instant stock updates across all channels, teams become more responsive and can focus more on tasks such as customer service or sales optimization. Unified management tools help anticipate procurement needs and prevent stockouts. Streamlined shipping and returns processes reduce errors and accelerate processing times. Retailers gain a comprehensive view of their inventory, enabling quick, informed decision-making.

How to implement unified stock in your business?

Choose a centralized management solution

Implementing unified stock requires deploying a centralized management solution. This software enables real-time tracking of stock levels across all sales channels—stores, warehouses, eCommerce, and suppliers—ensuring perfect consistency between theoretical and actual inventory. Each purchase, return, or transfer updates stocks instantly, eliminating inconsistencies and providing customers with a seamless shopping experience.

Unified management software, such as Orisha Commerce’s OMS (Order Management System), intelligently optimizes stock allocation. Product availability is adjusted based on demand, and shipments are optimized. For example, an eCommerce order can be shipped directly from a store near the customer, reducing delivery times and logistical costs. 

A unified platform enhances communication between channels. Orisha Commerce centralizes inventory data from all sales channels, providing real-time visibility and facilitating decision-making.

Optimize product data

Reliable, structured, and synchronized product data are crucial for implementing unified stock. The key is to centralize data into a single reference point. Using a PIM (Product Information Management) system ensures coherent and consistent dissemination of product information across all sales channels. Orisha Commerce seamlessly integrates with PIM solutions to maintain this consistency and prevent data errors that could impact inventory management and customer experience.

Automate processes

Automating processes enables retailers to increase efficiency and responsiveness. By automating repetitive tasks, they reduce errors and better anticipate needs. Anticipating stockouts is essential for retailers. With the automation tools provided by unified commerce platforms, real-time alerts can be configured to activate once a critical stock threshold is reached.

When a product hits a minimum threshold, the system can automatically place an order with suppliers, following predefined rules. Automation also speeds up the processing of customer returns by updating inventory as soon as a product is restocked.

With unified stock, retailers can offer a seamless and frictionless customer experience. Orisha’s solution automates key inventory management tasks, freeing up time for higher-value activities.

Unified stock has become an essential solution for managing inventory and optimizing sales effectively, regardless of the channel.

With perfect synchronization between sales channels, retailers and wholesalers can ensure optimal product availability and enhance the customer experience.

Sources ¹: Kaizen Institute