You search for an item in all your neighboring Stores but don’t get it then you research some more to figure out that it is sold exclusively through Wal-Mart. So, what do you do? You have three options ‘Site to Store’, ‘Pick Up Today’ or ‘Ship to Home’. But, ‘Ship to Home’ takes much longer for items to arrive and you decide to go with ‘Site to Store’. And, then you get greedy looking at ‘Pick Up Today’. So, you finally select the best option for yourself and submit your order. Wal-Mart sends you a confirmation with steps needed for you to pick up your order and it also asks for your phone number to send you confirmation mail once your order is ready to be picked up.
Everything is perfect to this point. So, what is the issue? One hour later you get an email from Wal-Mart that your order was cancelled because the item was not available! Wasn’t it precisely the point you opted for Site to Store and same day pickup? So, what happened? Inventory visibility issues? But, how can a feature like this be offered when there is a problem with inventory visibility? Well, it can and it did happen. And, for all you know, it can happen again.
Inventory visibility is one of the most crucial stepping stones for Multichannel logistics.
What is happening on the website is that the Inventory is not updated in real time correctly. I select a Store for ‘Store to Site’ (not all Store are eligible for this) and it shows an estimated time for Store pick up by adding 4hrs to current time. But, shouldn’t they check at the Inventory levels in the DC that supplies to the Store to show availability? They should; but as it appears, they are not doing it now. It seems there is a static calculation for estimated time, which doesn’t account for Inventory levels. But, when the item is not in stock even in the DCs, they have to cancel the order because:
Everything is perfect to this point. So, what is the issue? One hour later you get an email from Wal-Mart that your order was cancelled because the item was not available! Wasn’t it precisely the point you opted for Site to Store and same day pickup? So, what happened? Inventory visibility issues? But, how can a feature like this be offered when there is a problem with inventory visibility? Well, it can and it did happen. And, for all you know, it can happen again.
Inventory visibility is one of the most crucial stepping stones for Multichannel logistics.
What is happening on the website is that the Inventory is not updated in real time correctly. I select a Store for ‘Store to Site’ (not all Store are eligible for this) and it shows an estimated time for Store pick up by adding 4hrs to current time. But, shouldn’t they check at the Inventory levels in the DC that supplies to the Store to show availability? They should; but as it appears, they are not doing it now. It seems there is a static calculation for estimated time, which doesn’t account for Inventory levels. But, when the item is not in stock even in the DCs, they have to cancel the order because:
•They cannot push the order pickup time because then it defeats the very purpose of ‘Pick Up Today’. However, as a Customer, I might rather prefer shifting the Order pick up date/time than going through the entire process of Ordering the product again.
•Second, the item did not have both the options ‘Pick Up Today’ or ‘Site to Store’. With ‘Site to Store’ option, Customer would have waited for Order Pickup confirmation mail, which would have arrived only when the items were available. If not, the order pickup date would have been pushed forward and Order wouldn’t need to be cancelled.
Wal-Mart, with its excellent Supply Chain capabilities cannot afford to do this. Solution is pretty simple- they shouldn’t offer ‘Pick Up Today’ if they cannot look at real time inventory in DCs and predict order delivery correctly. But, if they still want to stick to it, they should provide an option for customer to choose another delivery date if they can’t fulfill an order on the same day. But, cancelling an Order leads to bad Customer experience, it blocks money on the card for days and Customer has to re-order the items!
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