Inventory Module Overview

Inventory Module Overview

Inventory is one of the core Modules of the Fluent platform providing capabilities relevant to the Inventory domain. 

Inventory module reference features and capabilities:

The inventory module allows users to:

• Create and update Standard and Variant products
• Manage Categories-
  • Create and update Categories for standard and variant products e.g. Men's Shoes
  • Create and update Sub-Categories for standard and variant products. e.g. Men's Formal Shoes
• Upsert Category and Product; the status of category/product (ACTIVE or INACTIVE) determines whether the inventory at this category/product level can be used (or not) for order fulfillment purposes

• Reserve, confirm and cancel Fulfillments
•  Processing Batch Inventory - updates of absolute inventory last on hand (LOH) value, providing the latest values of inventory that a company has in their locations — host systems usually include an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Point of Sale (POS) and/or Warehouse Management System (WMS)
• Processing Delta Inventory - update inventory relatively (incremental or decremental) against an inventory position. These are often used to notify the OMS of offline stock movements that have occurred during the day
• Manage inventory Available to Sell (ATS) via Virtual Catalogs e.g. Home Delivery Virtual Catalog for Home Delivery Network
• Configure safety stock buffers and exclusions via Control Groups and Controls management

Extension of Inventory Module's capabilities is possible through Software Development Kits (SDKs)

Common capability extensions:

• Soft Reservation refers to temporarily booking an item to hold stock for a period of time.  Here, external systems query the inventory position of requested items, return an accurate count of available inventory, and temporarily reserve the requested items. 
• Back-order is the process of selling inventory that is not in stock. This capability allows customers to purchase your products even when you don’t have enough in stock by creating back-ordered items.
• Inventory segmentation is a capability that allows retailers to set aside a certain amount of inventory to cater to the needs of different channels or groups. This ensures that each channel has sufficient inventory to satisfy demand.

Benefits to retailers:

• Reduce implementation and maintenance costs by providing the flexibility to use reference functionality and 'extend' capabilities when required
• Provide accurate Available to Sell (ATS) and Available to Promise (ATP) inventory stock levels to reduce overselling and underselling of the products.
• Gain a unified view of inventory across all locations and maintain a 'single source of the truth' across all inventory management systems
• Provide greater flexibility to retailers: 
  • Exclude products or categories from a virtual catalog.
  • Optimize safety stock by product, Category, Location.
• Segment inventory to ensure that each channel has sufficient inventory to satisfy demand
• Expand what's ATS:
  • Add or remove locations to and from networks.
  • Deactivate or activate the product or location to exclude or include what's available to sell.

How it works

Review the table below of key concepts which will help you better understand how the Inventory module works:

A diagram of the reference module process is shown below:

• The LOH or Delta quantity for an inventory position is sent from the ERP/POS/WMS systems to the 'Inventory Catalog Workflow'.
• The Inventory Catalog Workflow updates the inventory position in the Inventory Catalog.
• The Inventory Position notifies the Virtual Catalog Workflow which loads up any relevant Controls (safety stock buffers and exclusions) from the Control Group before updating the corresponding virtual position in the Virtual Catalog.   Virtual inventory positions provide sales channels (e.g., an eCommerce Site) with an accurate picture of ATS inventory, preventing overselling or underselling.
• Any product status updates from ERP or Product Information Management (PIM) systems are communicated back to the Inventory Catalog Workflow, e.g., for a particular product that's no longer part of the sellable catalog, the status of the inventory position can be changed from an ACTIVE product to INACTIVE.
• Inventory updates relating to order processing are sent into the Inventory Catalog Workflow from the 'Order Management Workflows', e.g., inventory reservations, converting a reservation to a sale, or cancelling the inventory reservation.