Intelliventory: Keeping Track of Your Entire Supply Chain

Globally, up to one trillion[1] dollars in annual revenue is lost due to shoppers encountering out-of-stock events as often as in one-in-three trips to the store. This translates to 40% of shoppers abandoning the store without any purchases and heading to a competitor instead. On the other hand, if they had found what they were looking for, “impulse buying” makes customers more likely to buy several other items in addition to what they had originally planned to purchase. The question here is – how do you make sure that your shelves are not just stocked, but that you have a smooth supply chain that ensures that they are always stocked? Intelliventory uses modern Iot-enabled technology and extensive data analytics to bring you the solution.

How it works

Intelliventory is an end-to-end solution that allows customers to monitor goods throughout the distribution chain, through tracking the movement of products not only on the shop floor but also in the warehouse. This level of visibility greatly enhances sales efficiency of FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products. In other words, Intelliventory is dedicated to ensuring the right product is in the right place at the right time.

“The Intelliventory solution is the result of continuous discussions with customers,” explains Shreyas Vinod, CTO of Intelliventory. “There’s a lot of discussion regarding digitisation of industries in general and you can see the ongoing movement where companies are focussed on optimising processes in all verticals: production, transportation, retail, etc.”

Because Intelliventory is a solution offered by parent company cthings.co, the technological prowess to support digitisation of retail from the shop floor to the warehouse were already in place. Instead of focussing on any one part of the chain, the Intelliventory team was able to assume a much broader perspective. While it is not the whole puzzle, it is one very big piece of it.

“The main goal is to improve logistics and sales efficiencies of fast-moving products,” says Arnold Wierzejski, CEO at Intelliventory. “First you have the sales front – monitoring goods on shop floors to understood how they move in real time. Then, the building blocks we use allow us to not just monitor them, but to also gain insight on the amount of goods that should be produced or ordered. So, the information at the sales-end impacts the whole value chain, including the production process.”

The Customers

There are two types of customers who benefit from the Intelliventory solution: retail chains, such as supermarkets, convenience stores, and discount stores, and producers of FMCG products.

“It’s important to sellers to have a good overview, because their margins are often small, and when we’re talking about supermarkets, perishable goods are involved,” says Wierzejski. “Producers can often go hand-in-hand with sellers. A lot of stores have dedicated areas that are ‘reserved’ by the producer, who might be providing their own shelves, cabinets, refrigerators, etc. It’s their own island within the store that they’re responsible for with their merchandising partner. So, the seller can improve sales with our solution on the shop floor, and so too can many producers, because whenever they have control of the PoS (Point of Sale), they can improve their logistics using Intelliventory.”

The Platform

The Intelliventory platform provides data for everything from stock levels to viability of perishable goods. The data is collected by sensors on the shelves.

“With legacy systems, your visibility was based on what was rung up at the cash register. You knew what going through the door, but you didn’t know what was out of stock, or where it was out of stock in any quantifiable way other than someone physically checking.

“Having this platform does away with human error,” says Wierzejski. “Someone on the shop floor trying to constantly keep an eye on stock levels isn’t optimal. Our platform ensures you can gauge how quickly things are selling and order before stock runs out. And when it comes to long-term planning, our analytics and predictive models help you prepare for them. Being able to see patterns means that you can adjust your ordering accordingly, and not only do you not run out, but you also prevent over-stocking. You also get alerts when goods are about to go out of stock, so that you can ensure proper stock rotation, reducing the number of out-of-date goods and putting things on special when the expiration date is close so that they move quickly, letting you make the best use of your assets.”

Intelliventory also helps with planning the real estate of shops, with analytics giving insights into how physical placement of goods impact sales. Previous solutions were based on cameras that monitored different areas, but it was not very precise. With Intelliventory sensors installed on shelves, all goods are tracked, giving shop owners much better overall visibility concerning factors related to product movement. You can also compare and contrast how goods move in different outlets, further adjusting your ordering to best meet the needs of your customers.