Multi-Channel Connected Supply Chain
InspireXT assisted a global luxury jewellery retailer to unify and modernise their order management and fulfilment business processes, as part of a multi-channel expansion programme.
Challenges
A global luxury brand synonymous with exquisite diamonds and timeless elegance. With a rich history dating back to the late 19th century, our client has established itself as the world’s leading diamond company, renowned for its commitment to quality, craftsmanship, and ethical sourcing.
They offer a unique shopping experience, based on personalised service from their boutiques located in various cities worldwide. They also were launching a new online sales channel and looking to integrate this into their luxury customer experience in a seamless manner.
The new online channel drove a review of the supply chain processes and necessitated new capabilities to be delivered within a tight timeline. These included
- New Product Information Master: Available across channels, and with traceability of both individual gems and the sellable jewellery items.
- Inventory within Locations: Given the high value unique items, the inventory was distributed across the central and store estate. It was necessary to unlock each inventory silo to make all stock globally available to all customers irrespective of channel.
- Limited Visibility to Order Tracking: Legacy applications lacked real-time access to critical order status information and needed to be able to trace both gems & jewellery throughout the end-to-end supply chain.
- Suboptimal Order Management: Complex order fulfilment processes and routing decisions required especial attention, including intercompany transfers.
- Manual Processes: Manual intervention to certain tasks in the business processes lead to errors and order fulfilment delays.
- Poor Modelling of Business Processes in Existing ERP: The central IT systems lacked a precise representation of important business process flows and logic – e.g. high value purchases with downpayment, customised or personalised products, the reservation process and managing of consigned stock from vendors/partners.
Solution
We understood that the Order-to-Cash process extends beyond the core functions of order booking, picking / shipping and invoicing, it is an end to end process that needs to be orchestrated to deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience, worthy of the luxury promise.
The following steps were taken to address the challenges.
- System Selection: A platform vs best of breed evaluation and commercial selection was undertaken. Core within the selection was identification of the unique business requirements and functional boundaries of the selection vs incumbent systems. Oracle Fusion was selected due to it’s ability to provide unit level traceability through the supply chain, the rapid deployment of the modular capabilities, the integrated nature of each module eliminating the need for intra-modular point-to-point, and it’s pre-built secure SaaS architecture.
- Solution Blueprint: Taking the unique business requirements and creating a specific demonstration to show how they could be delivered and amplified. Then, using the InspireXT process model built for Oracle Fusion Cloud, exploring which processes could be configured out of the box, which would require extensions, and which would be managed in conjunction with central or third-party applications.
- High-Level Orchestration Design: Based on all possible order routes, scenarios and edge cases, process & system design in parallel to orchestrate the end-to-end flow of orders.
- Core Logic: Create the overall step-by-step process, including order routing, task assignment, pause rules, aggregation rules and statuses. Including organisation and role level setup & security.
- Fulfilment Processes: Define the specific steps involved in fulfilling an order, such as credit holds, order promising, picking, shipping etc.
- Business Rules: Customise the order fulfilment process based on unique business requirements around reservation with down-payments, routing for consigned processes, auto email notifications etc.
- Integration Points: Configure external web-service connectors with various downstream applications such as,
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud – for customer details
- Oracle XStore POS – for instore transactions
- SAP and legacy apps – for creating transactions related to consigned products or stock and tracking upstream orders
- Salesforce Service Cloud – for recording order details for after-sales queries.
- SAP – for posting financial transactions and AR Invoicing. (We were able to minimise change within SAP through keeping much of the complexity within Oracle Fusion’s orchestration).
- Azure Datalake / BI – for reporting purposes.
- Intelligent Multi-channel Order Routing: Model and automate complex fulfilment processes, ensuring that multi-channel orders are routed to the appropriate fulfilment channels and that required steps are executed in the correct sequence. E.g.
- POS Orders – Require simple order promising. Utilises direct inventory updates within Oracle Cloud Inventory, eliminating the need for separate picking and shipping transactions.
- eCommerce Orders – On the contrary, requires complex order promising logic and integration with a third-party WMS for order fulfilment operations encompassing picking, packing, labelling and shipping.
- Partner Orders – Simpler and minimal fulfilment steps.
- Instore Stock Management: Build of a custom app using Oracle Apex lo-code to enable store colleagues to find stock, review rich product data, and manage click and collect.
Solution Components
- Technology: Oracle Cloud Order Management (including Oracle Global Order Promising), Oracle Product Lifecycle Management Cloud, Oracle Inventory Management, Business Rules, Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Apex.
Results
InspireXT is always committed to delivering exceptional value to our clients. Centralising order management, order orchestration and fulfilment processes not only supported the online channel launch on time, it also helped the end-to-end process profitability. This solution, underpinning InspireXT’s Common Process Model framework, delivered substantial yet practical benefits.
- Increased Operational Efficiency: Automated routine tasks reduced manual effort, and improved productivity throughout the order fulfilment process.
- Increase in Conversion: Global inventory visibility improved availability and choice, which in turn supported higher online conversion.
- Reduction in Working Capital: Through unlocking all inventory in each location, rate of sale was increased, and the overall level of stock was reduced without impacting on service levels.
- Real-Time Visibility: Provided a centralised view of order and real-time status, allowing business to track orders from inception to completion.
- Builds Stronger Customer Trust: Achieved through improved on time in full fulfilment and visibility of provenance.
- Seamless Integration Capabilities: Orchestration connected multiple downstream applications through a middleware layer to exchange business events using configurable business rules.
- Scalable and Adaptable: The client appreciated the process framework’s flexibility to support future channel and partner expansions, the platform’s increasingly smart capabilities, and the opportunity to extend to further functional areas through the modular platform.
- Lean IT: A combination of Oracle’s SaaS platform and InspireXT’s managed service enabled the client to retain a lean IT team, with InspireXT providing an advisory service to the business regarding incremental business requirements and Oracle quarterly releases, which were then deployed seamlessly through our release & automated regression testing service.
The Opportunity
A global luxury brand synonymous with exquisite diamonds and timeless elegance. With a rich history dating back to the late 19th century, our client has established itself as the world’s leading diamond company, renowned for its commitment to quality, craftsmanship, and ethical sourcing.
They offer a unique shopping experience, based on personalised service from their boutiques located in various cities worldwide. They also were launching a new online sales channel and looking to integrate this into their luxury customer experience in a seamless manner.
The new online channel drove a review of the supply chain processes and necessitated new capabilities to be delivered within a tight timeline. These included
- New Product Information Master: Available across channels, and with traceability of both individual gems and the sellable jewellery items.
- Inventory within Locations: Given the high value unique items, the inventory was distributed across the central and store estate. It was necessary to unlock each inventory silo to make all stock globally available to all customers irrespective of channel.
- Limited Visibility to Order Tracking: Legacy applications lacked real-time access to critical order status information and needed to be able to trace both gems & jewellery throughout the end-to-end supply chain.
- Suboptimal Order Management: Complex order fulfilment processes and routing decisions required especial attention, including intercompany transfers.
- Manual Processes: Manual intervention to certain tasks in the business processes lead to errors and order fulfilment delays.
- Poor Modelling of Business Processes in Existing ERP: The central IT systems lacked a precise representation of important business process flows and logic – e.g. high value purchases with downpayment, customised or personalised products, the reservation process and managing of consigned stock from vendors/partners.
The Solution
We understood that the Order-to-Cash process extends beyond the core functions of order booking, picking / shipping and invoicing, it is an end to end process that needs to be orchestrated to deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience, worthy of the luxury promise.
The following steps were taken to address the challenges.
- System Selection: A platform vs best of breed evaluation and commercial selection was undertaken. Core within the selection was identification of the unique business requirements and functional boundaries of the selection vs incumbent systems. Oracle Fusion was selected due to it’s ability to provide unit level traceability through the supply chain, the rapid deployment of the modular capabilities, the integrated nature of each module eliminating the need for intra-modular point-to-point, and it’s pre-built secure SaaS architecture.
- Solution Blueprint: Taking the unique business requirements and creating a specific demonstration to show how they could be delivered and amplified. Then, using the InspireXT process model built for Oracle Fusion Cloud, exploring which processes could be configured out of the box, which would require extensions, and which would be managed in conjunction with central or third-party applications.
- High-Level Orchestration Design: Based on all possible order routes, scenarios and edge cases, process & system design in parallel to orchestrate the end-to-end flow of orders.
- Core Logic: Create the overall step-by-step process, including order routing, task assignment, pause rules, aggregation rules and statuses. Including organisation and role level setup & security.
- Fulfilment Processes: Define the specific steps involved in fulfilling an order, such as credit holds, order promising, picking, shipping etc.
- Business Rules: Customise the order fulfilment process based on unique business requirements around reservation with down-payments, routing for consigned processes, auto email notifications etc.
- Integration Points: Configure external web-service connectors with various downstream applications such as,
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud – for customer details
- Oracle XStore POS – for instore transactions
- SAP and legacy apps – for creating transactions related to consigned products or stock and tracking upstream orders
- Salesforce Service Cloud – for recording order details for after-sales queries.
- SAP – for posting financial transactions and AR Invoicing. (We were able to minimise change within SAP through keeping much of the complexity within Oracle Fusion’s orchestration).
- Azure Datalake / BI – for reporting purposes.
- Intelligent Multi-channel Order Routing: Model and automate complex fulfilment processes, ensuring that multi-channel orders are routed to the appropriate fulfilment channels and that required steps are executed in the correct sequence. E.g.
- POS Orders – Require simple order promising. Utilises direct inventory updates within Oracle Cloud Inventory, eliminating the need for separate picking and shipping transactions.
- eCommerce Orders – On the contrary, requires complex order promising logic and integration with a third-party WMS for order fulfilment operations encompassing picking, packing, labelling and shipping.
- Partner Orders – Simpler and minimal fulfilment steps.
- Instore Stock Management: Build of a custom app using Oracle Apex lo-code to enable store colleagues to find stock, review rich product data, and manage click and collect.
Solution Components
- Technology: Oracle Cloud Order Management (including Oracle Global Order Promising), Oracle Product Lifecycle Management Cloud, Oracle Inventory Management, Business Rules, Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Apex.
The Outcome
InspireXT is always committed to delivering exceptional value to our clients. Centralising order management, order orchestration and fulfilment processes not only supported the online channel launch on time, it also helped the end-to-end process profitability. This solution, underpinning InspireXT’s Common Process Model framework, delivered substantial yet practical benefits.
- Increased Operational Efficiency: Automated routine tasks reduced manual effort, and improved productivity throughout the order fulfilment process.
- Increase in Conversion: Global inventory visibility improved availability and choice, which in turn supported higher online conversion.
- Reduction in Working Capital: Through unlocking all inventory in each location, rate of sale was increased, and the overall level of stock was reduced without impacting on service levels.
- Real-Time Visibility: Provided a centralised view of order and real-time status, allowing business to track orders from inception to completion.
- Builds Stronger Customer Trust: Achieved through improved on time in full fulfilment and visibility of provenance.
- Seamless Integration Capabilities: Orchestration connected multiple downstream applications through a middleware layer to exchange business events using configurable business rules.
- Scalable and Adaptable: The client appreciated the process framework’s flexibility to support future channel and partner expansions, the platform’s increasingly smart capabilities, and the opportunity to extend to further functional areas through the modular platform.
- Lean IT: A combination of Oracle’s SaaS platform and InspireXT’s managed service enabled the client to retain a lean IT team, with InspireXT providing an advisory service to the business regarding incremental business requirements and Oracle quarterly releases, which were then deployed seamlessly through our release & automated regression testing service.
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