Why real-time inventory visibility needs to be a part of your supply chain management strategy
The necessity of adopting omnichannel commerce techniques is old news. Every brick and mortar retailer has a plan to bring a shiny 
new mobile-responsive website online in the next few months or a plan to run a home delivery line out of their existing warehouses. What many don’t have, though, is a supply chain management plan that will give them the responsiveness and resilience they’ll need to keep all these new customers happy.
The customers you will gain through multi-channel marketing demand real time and 100% accurate inventory visibility on all of these new channels. If a first time home shopper gets a grocery delivery and you had to substitute smoked bacon for regular, they may just go to the competition next time. Lord help you if you didn’t have the grapes they ordered.
Your customers demand visible, modern supply chain management
Consumers don’t think of it as inventory visibility of course. They just want to know that all of the products they order will be delivered or made ready for pick-up. They want the same certainty as if they had pulled it from the shop shelf themselves.
A Forrester survey last December has it that the single most important factor to multichannel shoppers was knowing when their orders would arrive. Satisfying this expectation requires you to adopt a supply chain management system that allows visibility across all channels, and from one channel to another. Forrester predicts that within 2 years (one and a half, now) at least half of multi-channel retailers will feature the ability to check in-store, offline stock from their website or a mobile device.
Can I afford to provide this kind of supply chain management?
World class customer service isn’t easy, but not doing so is even more costly. The ley is combining business intelligence and supply chain management, and giving your customers the access to it that they need. The first few stores that manage to deliver really good omnichannel order management solutions will reap the rewards of customer loyalty long after the competition have caught up, as well.
Simply put, connect your customers to the products they want, and provide up to the minute data on stock levels across and between all your sales and distribution channels. Otherwise, the competition will.