What does a retail replenishment software do?

A replenishment software for retail businesses is a basic tool for any company that wants to improve its efficiency and reduce costs in the process of purchasing from suppliers.

Some of the functionalities offered by a purchasing software are:

Supplier management: You will be able to keep a record of suppliers and their stock, prices and delivery times.

Process automation: Another very useful function of these softwares is to automate tasks such as purchase orders, receipt of invoices and payment management. This reduces time and potential errors and inefficiencies associated with these processes.

Data analysis and integration: These purchasing programs can also provide you with customized reports and analytics on supplier performance, costs and other metrics. If you also choose to integrate the software with an ERP or other management system, you can have a global view of the health of your business from a single interface.

How does a replenishment software improve your inventory efficiency?

The first thing to do if you are looking to improve your inventory management is to identify inefficiencies in each of the logistical phases of your sales cycle. And one of the starting points for many businesses begins with the purchasing process.

Knowing how to optimize this phase of your logistics will allow you to save time and costs, as well as know what, how much, and when to buy so you don’t break your supply chain and get the most out of your inventory.

Purchasing control with AI for inventory planning

Stock control of your inventory should not be taken lightly, because, as we said above, optimizing the first logistical phases of your inventory is fundamental. Therefore, it is normal that you have to spend some time to know how much you are going to sell (and, therefore, which products you are going to have to replenish more frequently), which products, how often…

But… What if Artificial Intelligence offers you the help of its algorithm in your planning?

How to know what stock to replenish in your inventory

To know what stock to replenish in your inventory, it is logical that, by looking at the sales data history, you can see the products with the highest turnover, although for an ideal stock control you will have to look at other aspects such as the delivery time of the order, the profit margin or the associated costs.

Purchasing and logistics managers spend hours and days organizing and coordinating this stock transit on a recurring basis.

ROIvolution’s AI, aware of the time required to implement the entire strategy optimally, offers AI-powered shopping list suggestions for inventory planning.

Once the assortments are entered, you will automatically receive personalized purchase recommendations for each model based on different variables (product marketshare, commercial bet, cluster, etc.) as well as the efficient sizing curve.

How to determine your purchasing budget

How much of your budget do you dedicate to buying back new stock? Do you know if this is the ideal amount?

Determining the amount of budget we are going to dedicate to replenishing new merchandise is not always easy, and sometimes imbalances arise that affect through stock-outs or overstocks.

To always choose the ideal amount of budget for new purchases, ROIvolution’s AI Open-to-buy (OTB) function is just what you need.

The module allows you to review and analyze planned product purchases vs. actual purchases. This in turn allows you to clearly see the remaining budget for the season or if you have overspent. You will be able to view the information both by tabs (graph) and by table.

This panel will collect the following information:

• Units ordered in the purchase
• Purchase order cost
• Purchase order margin
• Estimated turnover
• Number of stores with implementation/Total number of stores
• Size/model curve

Purchasing process for stock management

If previously we focused on the process of planning a purchasing strategy to optimize an inventory, in the In-Season: Stock Management module it is also possible to monitor your purchases in real time.

How to know how much stock to buy

This is certainly one of the most vexing questions for logistics analysts and operations managers. Choosing one quantity or another, unless it is 100% synchronized with demand forecasts, will lead to imbalances that will affect the performance of your business.

ROIvolution’s AI-enabled replenishment proposals are the solution to this dilemma:

The buyback proposal will be given in cases where there is not enough stock in the company to cover the estimated future demand (always taking into account the internal rules of each business such as: the supplier-warehouse leadtime, the coverage you want to have in the warehouse, the periodicity with which orders can be placed or the minimums/order multiples to be respected).

To know if there will be a stock shortage and, therefore, to order from the supplier, the tool shows the expected stock data at the moment of receiving the order, as well as the stock needed at that moment to face the replenishment in the stores.

This configuration can be edited at store, warehouse or global business level.

How to detect when to buy new stock

And the other big question, in addition to how much stock to buy, is when. Taking into account the timing and deadlines set with your suppliers, having a precise knowledge of your estimated upcoming demand will allow you time and margin to correct mismatches.

And this is where ROIvolution’s Warehouse Stockout Alert works its magic.

This parameter, which takes into account your historical data through AI analysis, allows you to identify a stockout when a product reaches a minimum number of stock units. The tool will consider that it has reached this minimum when the stock is less than the number of units indicated in the parameter.