Inventory Management
Where Should Inventory Management Report In Your Organization?
As we do comprehensive inventory management assessments, often the issue surfaces as to where the function should report? Traditionally, inventory planning, forecasting and management functions have reported to the Merchants. But products assortments and businesses became more complex and diversified management often asks should it report to Operations or Finance? The rationale is that the [...]
How USI Laminate Turned Back the Clock on Aging Inventory with Manage Metrix
Summary In only a few months, USI has used Manage Metrix to significantly drive down aged inventory, pro-actively liquidate non-productive stock, quantify vendor delivery performance, reduce orders for items that are not needed and understand trends in product performance and inventory. And as a result, the company is able to, “detect issues before they become [...]
How are you measuring your eCommerce promotions’ advertising and breakeven?
Historically, the catalog industry has measured the response rate for various promotions, the advertising cost of the promotion and its breakeven based on demand, product cost etc. Along comes the eCommerce world and many of the new promotional methods (such as email, affiliate programs, etc.) are apparently not being measured. At the same time, companies [...]
How to Make Vendor Compliance Programs Work For You
Of all the strategies for reducing costs in your business, vendor compliance programs may be the most underdeveloped. A well thought-out, formal vendor compliance program can reduce supply chain logistics costs, reduce freight costs, speed up order processing, and lead directly to increased customer satisfaction. In order to achieve this it must spell out your [...]
Published Book – Best Practices in Multichannel Operations & Fulfillment
Best Practices in Multichannel Operations & Fulfillment is still available for purchase on Amazon.com. This guide to multichannel best practices was derived from our years of experience with hundreds of catalog, eCommerce and retail companies. Our team understands the issues and challenges facing multichannel businesses and provides insight on the following topics: Business Management – including [...]
How Well Are You Managing Your Inventory?
Inventory is most likely the largest balance sheet asset in your company. How well you plan, purchase, and manage your inventory largely determines your level of customer service and profits. But selling goods in multiple channels and titles means dealing with channel- and title-specific planning and inventory management needs. Based on our inventory management consulting [...]
Supply Chain Strategies to Control and Reduce Expenses
We all know we’re coming out of a tough business climate. With many companies ramping up for fall and holiday seasons, there is an urgent need to increase productivity and reduce costs without having to make major capital purchases to do so. Here are some supply chain strategies to reduce your cost per order, increase capacity without expansion, [...]
Competitive Edge: A More Rigorous Approach to Merchandise Analysis
In this difficult and increasingly competitive retail environment, catalog merchants are more challenged than ever to increase sales and profit. From what I am seeing, the good news is that merchandising executives are increasingly giving emphasis to both sales and profitability metrics when measuring catalog performance, a healthy direction that will be sure to increase [...]
