The 2020-2021 holiday shopping season is unlike any other before it. The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health response to it and the simultaneous acceleration of e-commerce means many supply chains will be tested throughout the months of November, December and January.
The new supply chain landscape this holiday season
A Morning Consult survey of over 2,000 U.S. adults found that almost half (47%) planned to shop exclusively online this season, compared to only 21% who would do all of their shopping in-person, while the rest (31%) intended to do some of both. In response, some of the changes that merchants are rolling out include:
- Curbside pickup for more items: This option has become popular as both an appealing safety measure (no in-store browsing) and convenience (order online, but no shipping costs or delays). It is a logical extension of the buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) paradigm.
- Expanded same-day delivery, for a cost: Bed Bath & Beyond, Target (Shipt) and Walmart (Walmart+) have all invested heavily in faster fulfillment of some products from 2020 onward, but typically through the added price of a monthly or yearly subscription.
- Earlier promotions: Black Friday is no longer the start of the holiday shopping season, with many merchants launching their deals as early as October to align with Amazon Prime Day, per CNBC.
Moreover, with people in the U.S. spending far less on restaurant dining and other services this fall and winter, a lot of money could be rechanneled toward online and pickup orders in particular. Implementing and sustaining the above measures, especially in the face of the unique demands and challenges of the COVID-19 reality, requires adept supply chain planning.
The supply chain landscape looks a little different this holiday season and will require some adjustments.
The order management-order promising divide
More online ordering means a bunch of new challenges. One of the biggest challenges is that giving your customers a correct delivery or pickup date / time is more complicated than before. Previously, when online ordering was less prevalent, you could promise an accurate date / time to customers based on pre-scheduled loading of item availability data to your website (maybe once a day). With more customers ordering online, it is now important that the process take place in real-time. An order by “Customer A” must be taken in account when promising another order to “Customer B” a second later. Oracle Global Order Promising (GOP) Cloud can help you achieve this desired result; however, existing order management systems may struggle with all of the added pressure.
What if you use a legacy order management system as the back-office for your website? How will you connect it to Oracle Cloud GOP which uses a different technology stack? Lack of seeded integration between legacy solutions and cloud-based order promising systems such as Oracle Global Ordering Promising (GOP) Cloud means that supply chain operations might not function as smoothly as expected during periods of high activity. Retail Systems Research has provided background on the broader costs of these technical shortcomings. Its survey of 500 logistics firms found that 29% of them cited “legacy systems” as their top challenge, tied with “insufficient budget.”
More specifically, if your order promising system is not tightly integrated with your order management system, the promises that it will make to your customers will be inaccurate. The order management system will struggle to send available-to-promise (ATP) calls and scheduling requests to the order promising system, and the latter in turn won’t return the stock levels, ship dates and other relevant information necessary for completing the order.
Having the overall capacity to “tap every source of supply to deliver on time, at the lowest cost” this holiday season and beyond, as Oracle puts it, isn’t possible without deep order management-order promising integration. But many organizations find themselves in situations like the following:
- They have Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) in place for order management.
- They’re still using on-prem Oracle GOP because of its native integration with Oracle EBS.
- They don’t have any integration between Oracle EBS and the Oracle GOP Cloud, despite being in the process of moving planning functions to the cloud.
- Without access to GOP Cloud, they also can’t take advantage of the Oracle REST service.
Bridging the divide with an Inspirage solution
Fortunately for organizations staring down at a busy holiday season, Inspirage has bridged the gap between Oracle EBS and the Oracle GOP Cloud by leveraging Oracle’s REST service. In fact, our solution is compatible with multiple ERP systems, not just Oracle EBS – and it can provide specific benefits such as:
- Real-time ATP calls.
- Global and local ATP support.
- Support for both Standard Items and Configure-to-Order products (including ‘Option-specific Sourcing’ for Configured items).
- Scheduling, rescheduling and cancellation of orders.
- Compatibility with any middleware platform.
Overall, the Inspirage solution lets organizations harness the power of the Oracle GOP Cloud as demand ramps up and takes new forms (e.g., more pickup orders, fewer in-store transactions) this holiday season. Learn more by connecting with one of our supply chain management experts today.
