Our Intelligent Inventory Management apps proactively manage inventory levels across our network using mature data science, ensuring optimal stock at each node and maximum efficiency to fulfill orders quickly and prevent stockouts.
Artificial Intelligence dominates the conversation across all industries today. Leaders are well on theirjourney towards capitalizing on its benefits of efficiency and improved customer experience.
But it’s not easy. In fact, it is intimidating for most organizations!
It takes a good team of data science developers, retail expertise, and logistics prowess to pull it off. Most small and mid-sized companies will never have that capability in-house. They must outsource it to evolve and survive in the age of ecommerce. They must search for partners that embed artificial intelligence and insights into their systems.
That is why Quiet invested so heavily in these systems—to be a better partner.
The Struggle is Real: Inventory Challenges for Apparel, Luxury & Wellness Brands
Born out of the logistics arm of American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), we are well versed in the biggest challenges e-commerce retailers face today. We built our entire operation around servicing the specific needs of retailers across industries like apparel, footwear, health & wellness and luxury goods:
- Seasonality: Predicting demand for a summertime swimsuit in December, or a festive self-care package in July, requires a keen understanding of seasonal trends.
- Rapidly Evolving Trends: The fashion world moves much faster in the world of social media influencers. Staying in tune with these trends and building resiliency into your supply chain network is essential to capitalize on your stock.
- Limited Storage Space: For mid-market retailers, storage space is precious. Data science optimizes inventory allocation, ensuring you have the right amount of stock, in the right place.
- Omnichannel Fulfillment: Meeting customer expectations across online and physical stores requires a seamless and efficient inventory management system.
- Customer Experience: In an age when everyone has an Amazon account, vendors need to match or exceed the level of communication, transparency and speed that they do, or risk relegation.
Quiet: Your Data-Driven Inventory Management Partner
Quiet boasts the largest data science team in retail logistics. Led by Gabriella Runnels, this team has created numerous applications to help our supply chain to run more efficiently.
While we have a whole slew of applications, many of which we run behind the scenes for our customers, the focus of our recent whitepaper Supply ChAIn: How Mid-Market Retailers Can Master Inventory Management with Data-Driven Insights (Powered by Quiet) is on the suite of four interconnected applications that are revolutionizing how we do Intelligent Inventory Management.
"Shipping and delivery costs remain one of the highest costs of online business."
Gabriella Runnels, Principal Data Scientist at Quiet
How our advanced data science elevates your logistics
Predictive Inventory Optimization
- Product Assortment: Our intelligent algorithms analyze customer demand patterns and historical data to determine the optimal product mix for each fulfillment center, ensuring you always have the right inventory at the right place.
- Dynamic Carton Routing: Real-time data insights guide the routing of incoming shipments to their ideal destinations, minimizing transportation costs and maximizing efficiency.
- Inventory Rebalancing: We proactively manage your inventory levels across the network, ensuring optimal stock at each node to fulfill orders quickly and prevent stockouts.
- Inventory Intelligence Layer: Gain real-time visibility into your inventory health and leverage actionable insights to optimize margin, reduce waste, and make data-driven decisions.
Beyond Inventory
- Network Optimization: Our data science models analyze various factors like order volume, location, and transportation costs to strategically design your fulfillment network, ensuring optimal efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
- Dynamic Carrier Selection: We leverage real-time data and machine learning to select the most suitable last-mile carrier for each delivery, considering factors like cost, speed, and customer preferences.
- Demand Forecasting: Our advanced algorithms analyze historical sales data and market trends to predict future demand with remarkable accuracy, enabling you to optimize inventory levels and proactively prepare for peak seasons.
- Pick Path Optimization: Our AI-powered app maps fulfillment requests and SLAs to create streamline pick paths, boosting productivity and reducing fulfillment times.
- Storage Optimization: Our data-driven app optimizes an individual warehouse layout, ensuring active items are easily accessible while minimizing inactive inventory.
These 4 apps work in concert together to improve operations. For customers using our virtual node services—where you send inventory to one warehouse and we manage it across our network as we see fit—we run these for you. For multi-node customers who want a role in how their inventory is being optimized across nodes, we share these applications with you.
The apps include:
- Forecasting App: Provides hyper-accurate sales forecasts, taking into account historical data, seasonal trends, and customer demographics. It can even forecast for products that have no sales history.
- Assortment App: Optimizes inventory allocation across your network, ensuring the right products are co-located in the right stores and warehouses at the right time. This app slashes split shipments down to an average of 1.1 per order.
- Dynamic Carton Routing App: Utilizes real-time data to get new inventory to the right location the first time, cutting shipping costs before the item is even sold.
- Inventory Rebalance App: Continuously monitors inventory levels and facilitates transfers between locations to prevent stockouts and optimize inventory utilization.
The Benefits of Data-Driven Inventory Management
The benefits of data science across your supply chain are many-fold. But two stand out:
You can save on average 20%. The average retailer who starts on our system looks to save at least 20% on their logistics costs. Some of this is access to better rate cards due to our overall volume, but most of it is because of the built in intelligence of our systems.
You can get back to focusing on making your customers happy. Most retailers are great at what they sell, and just OK at logistics. Partnering with an organization like Quiet means you don’t have to invest in logistics, but you’ll get the benefits of cutting edge technology anyway.
Don’t let outdated technology and processes hold your business back from reaching its full potential. And don’t think that embracing technology will cost you—chances are it will actually lower your costs. Embrace the power of data science and transform your inventory from a warehouse function into a strategic advantage. Â
Download our free whitepaper, Supply ChAIn: How Mid-Market Retailers Can Master Inventory Management with Data-Driven Insights (Powered by Quiet), to learn more about how data science can improve your inventory management—and how Quiet can be that partner that helps you revolutionize your inventory management and gives your brand the edge it needs to compete now.
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