As brick-and-mortar stores continue to lag behind in performance
compared to digital commerce alternatives, multi-store retailers
are recalibrating fulfillment strategies to meet new customer
preferences and demand on capacity.
MONTREAL, Oct. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tecsys Inc.
(TSX: TCS), an industry-leading supply chain management and
omnichannel commerce software company, is delighted to announce
that multiple retailers using Tecsys' retail order
management technology have leveraged their omnichannel
distribution platform agility to use inventory from closed physical
showroom locations for micro-fulfillment of online orders. This
distributed order management platform accommodates the surge in
e-commerce ordering during the pandemic shutdowns and equips
retailers for reduced foot traffic during seasonal peaks.
Demand for pickup and delivery options across the retail
industry has intensified since the pandemic, with a trendline
indicating these fulfillment channels are unlikely to wane. With
many retailers structured for a blend of in-store and online
shopping optimized to pre-pandemic volumes, Tecsys customers are
equipped to pivot their distribution network and strategy to
accommodate the surging digital commerce activity likely to spike
this holiday season.
One such Tecsys customer, national shoe retailer Browns Shoes
Inc., is leveraging its Tecsys distributed order management system
to power a multi-channel shopping experience that reconciles
digital and physical shopping and enables fulfillment across
retail locations through micro-fulfillment and a central
distribution center. Micro-fulfillment is the process of leveraging
retail storefronts for online and pickup order fulfillment during a
store's downtime or in parallel to consumer shopping.
The onset of the pandemic meant that Browns Shoes had to
accommodate shifting buyer preferences across digital channels. The
flexibility of Tecsys' platform enabled Browns Shoes
to leverage inventory across all locations — stores and DCs —
even during shutdown periods, enabling Browns to keep customer
orders moving smoothly despite fragmented inventory across
multiple locations, maintaining business operations despite
the disruption.
As Alexandre Hubert, senior
director IT Strategy & Logistics at Browns Shoes,
explains, "The Tecsys platform enables us to have real-time
inventory visibility, optimized order routing, and a solution that
enables advanced hub and spoke retail operational capabilities. We
were already set up to fulfill orders from stores, so even as the
pandemic stopped in-person shopping, we were able to switch order
inventory sources on and off to process transactions based on what
was available and accessible and bring those multi-line orders
together to designated locations for order deliveries or single box
shipments."
Similar to micro-fulfillment, dark stores entail full store
conversions to fulfillment hub, recalibrating the physical layout
and logical workflows to accommodate optimal picking routes and
capacity. Turning a retail location into a dark store facilitates
the fulfillment of online orders more efficiently. A converted
location's layout and picking processes are reworked to optimize
order-handling capacity and improve fulfillment performance. While
it is a strategy most often employed by the grocery industry, one
of Australia's largest
supercenters has converted two stores into dark fulfillment centers
by using Tecsys' retail order management software.
"Tecsys' platform enabled them to adapt to market demands
quickly and easily," says Steven Berkovitz, chief platform
officer at Tecsys. "They were able to start fulfilling online
orders through dark stores without any consumer disruption. Because
the Tecsys system is already set up to virtualize inventory across
retail locations and fulfill orders based on a number of
configurable parameters, they had the ability to close, convert and
process orders within days."
Micro-fulfillment and dark store fulfillment are out-of-the-box
functionalities in Tecsys' retail software offering. As buyer
profiles and shopping preferences are changing in light of
COVID-19, retail operations equipped with Tecsys software are able
to quickly adapt to consumer behavior.
"Being able to recalibrate and reimagine your fulfillment
channels to meet new customer demands helps in changing markets,
and we are seeing extraordinary change in the retail market,"
continues Berkovitz. "Projected shopping behaviors have catapulted
forward, with the ratio of in-store versus digital shopping having
fast-forwarded by roughly 10 years according to some analysts.
Flexible fulfillment options are giving retailers a fighting chance
to serve their online customers better, faster and smarter."
"Tecsys customers are in a unique position to leverage their
existing retail locations to meet the rise in consumer demand for
pickup and delivery options with the flip of a switch," explains
Peter Brereton, president and CEO at
Tecsys. "Whether it's leveraging micro-fulfillment, converting to a
dark store, expanding into a new country, adding a new fulfillment
option like ship-to-home, we are privileged to help our customers
navigate this turmoil and come out of it with better options for
their consumers, driving topline performance."
Tecsys' retail platform is the all-in-one SaaS offering that
powers multi-channel and omnichannel commerce for some of the
world's most preeminent brands. Equipping retailers with the
ability to dynamically route and fulfill orders across online and
physical locations, Tecsys software serves as the nucleus for
distributed order fulfillment, in-store and curbside pickup,
ship-from-store and ship-to-home, among other delivery methods. The
company's solutions enable seamless transaction capture, processing
and distribution across digital and in-store channels, giving
retailers a single provider for end-to-end distribution management
functionality capable of routing complex order management
combinations.
About Tecsys
Tecsys is a global provider of supply
chain solutions that equip the borderless enterprise for growth.
Organizations thrive when they have the software, technology and
expertise to drive operational greatness and deliver on their brand
promise. Spanning healthcare, retail, service parts, third-party
logistics, and general wholesale high-volume distribution
industries, Tecsys delivers dynamic and powerful solutions for
warehouse management, distribution and transportation management,
supply management at point of use, retail order management, as well
as complete financial management and analytics solutions. Tecsys'
shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker
symbol TCS. For more information on Tecsys, visit
www.tecsys.com.
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SOURCE Tecsys Inc.