How the Business Intelligence Suite helps reduce residual stock

Residual stock is a real headache for retailers, providing both financial loss and genuine logistical challenges. However, understanding stock flow throughout the season and optimising omnichannel order management are concrete solutions to the issue of residual stock. To address this challenge, OneStock has developed a Business Intelligence tool (BI Suite), enabling retailers to gain agility, identify different stock movements during the season, and limit residuals by implementing corrective actions when necessary.

The challenge of residual stock

The problem of residual stock often results from poor stock flow throughout the season. However, this does not necessarily mean that you have not received enough orders; it could also be orders that you were unable to fulfil due to stock-outs in your e-commerce warehouse. The result? At the end of the season, your stores find themselves burdened with unsold items and new collections. Storing all these references is complex, and you end up sending the residuals back to the warehouse. This is a costly process:

• From a financial standpoint: Packaging residual stock and transporting it to the warehouse has a real financial impact being a recurring expense at the end of each season.
• From a human standpoint: Collecting and packaging residual stock takes up your retail teams’ time and, once it has been transported, your warehouse teams are also required to process the stock.

What impact can a BI suite have on residual stock?

In an omnichannel context, an OMS allows for intelligent order orchestration, ultimately optimising stock flow throughout the entire network. However, having an analysis tool is essential to know where to focus. For example, identifying stores that typically have more residual stock at the end of the season allows for analysis to determine the causes and identify potential solutions.

This is precisely what the BI Suite allows for. The solution is particularly relevant for:

• Taking stock of your sales network: OneStock’s BI Suite processes a significant amount of data, allowing for a complete analysis of a retailer’s performance. The number of returns received in-store, order abandonment rate and capture, are all analytics that influence the number of residuals at the end of the season and can have a significant impact on the network’s performance.
• Identifying potential areas for improvement: Performance analysis also highlights areas for improvement and establishes concrete development objectives. For example, if data shared by the BI Suite indicates that the same store frequently abandons the processing of orders they previously accepted, the retail director can then contact the store manager to optimise order capture and preparation processes by highlighting the fact that online order preparation results in incentives and fewer residuals at the end of the season.

To reduce your residuals and learn more about the BI Suite, get in touch today.