SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ.-- November 19, 2021 -- Focused on empowering retailers to meet and exceed the rapidly evolving consumer expectations around fulfillment speed, convenience and accuracy, and to reduce the cost to fulfill, Blue Yonder has launched several microservices under the Luminate™ Commerce portfolio to help retailers meet the demands of consumers. These individually deployable, augmentative microservices offer a reimagined and personalized consumer experience by allowing retailers to ensure order and fulfillment accuracy.

E-commerce was rapidly growing prior to 2020; however, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed even more consumers online, contributing an additional $105 billion in U.S. online revenue in 2020 and accelerating e-commerce by two years, as reported in Digital Commerce 360. In addition, nearly $1 in every $5 spent on retail purchases continue to come from digital orders, according an analysis of Commerce Department Q2 2021 data.

“The traditional monolithic solutions are very limiting to retailers and don’t give them the ability to add new features. Our microservices allow retailers to augmentatively add new capabilities without the need to rip and replace their existing solutions. This allows them to realize the value of the new capabilities quickly and meet business goals. As a result, many of our customers start with one microservice and after seeing benefits, they come back to us to implement additional services to help them meet customer demands while also keeping an eye on their bottom line,” said Eugene Amigud, corporate vice president, Product Management and Architecture, Blue Yonder.

Whether curbside pickup, buy online pickup in store (BOPIS), shipped from/to store, or same-day delivery/last-mile, retailers need omni-channel solutions to help them digitally transform to meet e-commerce growth. That’s why Blue Yonder has launched an end-to-end suite of highly scalable and individually deployable digital commerce microservices that include:

· Commits: Retailers can provide accurate, aggressive, and cost-effective promised delivery dates, and flexible fulfillment options early in the buying process to increase conversion rates, as well as optimize fulfillment to save costs. It enables retailers to deliver the right product, at the right time, through the consumers’ channel of choice, with the speed and convenience that consumers expect.
· Inventory Availability: Everyone needs to know where inventory is located and how it can be used. Retailers can present shoppers with enterprise-wide, real-time inventory availability data to incent them to buy. Retailers can show shoppers what’s available at their local store versus available for shipping and incent them to buy with urgency messaging (for example, one item left). Consumers can also easily reserve and then later buy products.
· Order Fulfillment: Retailers can perform store micro-fulfillment activities, i.e., pick, pack and fulfill orders, with increased accuracy and improved productivity. Store associates can serve customers thru various methods such as curbside delivery, deliver at home, delivery in-store, or ship to home. Store associates and managers have complete visibility of all store micro-fulfillment activities with actionable dashboards.
· Order Services and Customer Order Visibility (COV) - This high-performing, scalable API-based microservice orchestrates and manages the entire order-to-cash lifecycle. It provides a centralized view of orders, whether they are placed from a retailer’s website, a physical store, an online marketplace or a call center — and across brands and geographies. Customer Order Visibility (COV) is a real-time tracking and monitoring solution with an intuitive user experience that enables customer service, retail and other staff to search, view and modify real-time order details in one place, creating a single, up-to-date repository of order information. The COV uses an integrated user interface so businesses can search, view and modify order details in one place, with complete visibility into each order and its fulfillment details. Leveraging unsupervised learning algorithms, COV generates actionable insights on metrics that organizations can use to optimize the promising and fulfillment process.

Powered by machine learning analytics, these microservices can quickly detect anomalies with minimal or no manual configuration and draw attention to areas of potential need, including stock out predictions, sell through rates, the need for markdowns, and inventory accuracy.

“Our microservices enable retailers to leverage stores in their digital transformation journey while continuing to manage existing day-to-day operations. Retailers can now empower today’s shoppers to make smarter decisions, increasing customer satisfaction while streamlining store fulfillment operations and increasing productivity and revenue,” said Omar Akilah, corporate vice president - Commerce, Blue Yonder.