Revolutionize your ecommerce: master your inventory and reduce costs today!
Managing your inventory can bring many benefits: customer satisfaction, better distribution of employee workloads, saving time, reducing losses, sustainability and improving the competitiveness of your ecommerce. Better prediction of inventory needs allows you to save money when your sales naturally decline during certain seasons. You will also be better prepared to handle order peaks. AI also enables historical data analysis, study of market trends, and consideration of economic factors (such as the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy prices). By adopting AI-optimized inventory management early, you will have a tool to do many other analyses, some of which are not yet accessible today.
Automate your inventory management with AI for unparalleled efficiency!
The AI-powered inventory management process involves several steps. The first step is data collection. Then, AI analyzes it, and finally, this data is interpreted. You need to know how to interpret your data, or at least make sense of it. However, AI can not only detect data, but will also be able to interpret even the smallest variations. The goal is to predict the number of orders over a year, reduce the risk of stockouts, and improve resource allocation, including that of your team. This process can be fully automated thanks to the many possibilities offered by machine learning in Python. However, simpler automations can be created with less code, or even without any.
For example, you can use Zapier to connect Google Sheets to OpenAI and add steps to integrate AI. Another solution is to import or connect your Excel files into Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) to create interactive visualizations. Tools like Tableau, combined with Explain Data AI, also enable detailed analyses. However, some methods, if not directly connected to your files, may lack responsiveness to variations in your orders throughout the year.
Enhance your ecommerce logistics: key steps to optimizing inventory through AI
With AI optimization, you can visualize your inventory flows over a year. This allows you to identify variations due to seasons, end-of-year holidays, Valentine's Day or sales. It is crucial to reduce your annual storage costs and avoid any risk of stock shortages. Optimal management seems to be that of the minimum stock, from a financial, ecological and practical point of view. However, this is only achievable with excellent knowledge of your sales. Indeed, the purchases made by your customers allow you to concentrate more energy on your best sellers and reduce those which sell less well. Inventory management is closely linked to your sales and plays an essential role in your e-logistics. Poor inventory management can harm your brand reputation if your products end up out of stock too often.Inventory management goes through several stages:
1. Real-time management
Use inventory management software like WooCommerce, Prestashop, or Odoo, or regularly updated files to manage your inventory in real time. This allows for inventory updates across your sales channels and fast shipping of your products.
2. Anticipation of order flows
Plan order flows based on seasons and events like Christmas or sales. Don't forget to take into account the delivery times of your products when planning your orders.
3. Product prioritization
Analyze your flagship products and best sellers based on seasons and sales channels. Plan the distribution of your stocks in different warehouses, and, if necessary, reduce unnecessary storage spaces to save costs and organization.
4. Order automation
Set an automatic restocking point for each product. For example, when the stock of a product drops to 5 or 10 items, a new order is automatically placed.
Accelerate deliveries and cut storage costs with cross-docking!
By controlling these settings, you can significantly reduce your storage requirements. cross-docking allows you to transport your goods directly from your suppliers to your delivery points without going through a warehouse. Packages must be labeled by the supplier with the delivery details of the end customer. Here are the steps of cross-docking:
- Receipt of packages: the packages are unloaded from the supplier trucks and identified using codes or other markers.
- Immediate delivery: the packages are then sent to the exit platform corresponding to the final destination. A second identification confirms that the package taken out is indeed the one that entered.
Please note that the goods must already be packaged and prepared for final delivery to the customer. With this method, your products are not stored for a long period, but are transited. AI optimization of your inventory can help you master this method or minimize your unnecessary inventory rate.
Maximize your ecommerce profitability: combine AI and omnichannel strategies for optimal inventory management
Optimizing your inventory requires stability and at least a year of sales data. Your analysis will be more accurate with your own data, experience, and knowledge of your customers and products. However, some data can be more difficult to interpret. Sales fluctuations across different channels may have different rhythms. For example, in-store sales may be higher during the holidays, while online sales don't necessarily follow the same pattern. Additionally, some of your products sell very well, while others do less well. Here too, you'll need to gather your data and optimize your inventory accordingly.
Analyzing these variations is crucial to making accurate predictions. Don't hesitate to analyze your sales flows according to seasons, holidays, physical and digital channels, products, as well as other variables such as sales, trends and days of the week. You can also start by analyzing the statistics and the number of orders on your e-commerce site. After collecting this data, compare it to your inventory and organize it accordingly.
Stay competitive: harness AI's power to boost your e-commerce performance!
Optimizing your inventory with Artificial Intelligence (AI) has many advantages: reduction of storage costs and losses, better distribution of employee workloads, prediction of orders over the year, etc. This also allows you to know your customer better and get closer to them by understanding what they order, when, on what channel, how often and what relationship you have with them. Adopting AI for inventory management is a winning strategy to improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
We offer solutions for the entire digital and physical ecommerce chain. Our solutions are integrated with a warehouse management system.
Inventory optimization with Artificial Intelligence (AI)