What is your Available to Sell Strategy?
As one of the bloggers (Chandradeep) posted earlier, companies look to optimize their inventory levels (or "Sell Nothing") while maximizing their sales per customer footfall/click through. (http://infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/2008/09/how_to_sell_nothing.html#more)
One key aspect is to define the ‘Available to Sell’ Strategy. In layman's term, ‘Available to Sell’ is what the company can promise for a delivery in a specified time window. This includes the current uncommitted inventory at a fulfillment location and any open purchase orders. This can even be extended to supplier finished inventory, WIP inventory and scheduled plans.
Building a glass pipeline view of the supply chain as mentioned in previous blog helps define the ATS strategy. Though seemingly a simple recommendation, building an end to end pipeline visibility has many implementation challenges. This requires an Order orchestrator that also acts as an Inventory Synchronization hub with near real time visibility to the ebb and flow of inventory levels. This also requires developing agreements with suppliers to enhance Inventory and Shipment visibility and investing in the collaboration infrastructure.
An order management system implementation without putting the ATS strategy and support infrastructure is a quick fire recipe for disappointment. This just translates to having to say "I'm Sorry" hundreds of times even after accepting the orders. An integrated order orchestration platform provides the ability to offer stocked, non-stocked special order and custom products and services through all channels while managing cent percent fulfillment of them.
Over next few blogs we would continue to discuss the building blocks of integrated order orchestration platforms. I would be happy to hear your thoughts on how your company approaches the "Available to Sell" conundrum.
Comments
hi,
Nice thoughts..How is ATS different from ATP(Available to Promise)..
Posted by: venkataraghavan | October 15, 2008 02:52 PM
Venkat,
In traditional ERP understanding term ATP is used to define a batch mode process where a planning and promising engine looks at the customer orders, available inventory snapshot and does hard allocations with fulfillment dates.
However an online retailer has window of a split second to confirm or regret when a customer enters the expected delivery dates. This means that the key requirement
is to have real time visibility to events happening across the network and factor those while confirming the order.
Posted by: Amarpal Sanghera | October 20, 2008 11:43 AM