Cooler months are upon us, which, for those in the retail sector, can only mean one thing: the holiday shopping season.
But as Q4 approaches, retailers face a changed landscape, with attendant new challenges. Some of the biggest ones in the next quarter will be supply chain delays and labor shortages.
While online shopping was part of what saved many retail companies during the height of the pandemic, recent studies show that brick-and-mortar shopping isn’t going anywhere. In fact, as vaccination rates rise, an increasing number of customers will be cautiously returning to their favorite stores. This is why retail leaders must make sure every customer who walks through your store doors this holiday season has an amazing shopping experience.
Thankfully, a few types of technology can make this happen, namely IoT-powered enterprise inventory management.
The first step in going back to the store can be buying a product online first: in a study in April/May 2020, 6% of customers said they tried BOPIS for the first time. While BOPIS purchases can make shopping experiences more efficient, they’re prone to errors such as products ending up in the wrong vehicle, which can lead to delays in pick-up availability. Companies can prevent this entirely by implementing a hybrid solution of tracking tags and software that can keep tabs on every delivery vehicle, warehouse, and piece of inventory.
It’s great news whenever a product is flying off the shelves! But the other side of the coin is Out-of-Stock events. When a customer reads online that a product is in stock, only to find out after making the trip to the store that it’s not there, it leads to customer dissatisfaction. With live visibility, like Apptricity’s Enterprise Inventory Management solution, you can make sure that the quantity of a product online always matches the number of products on the shelves or in the warehouse.
By implementing the newest IoT technology to make sure inventory is tracked at all times, retailers can make the most of this holiday season.
