Radial Integration | 2016
Store Fulfillment integration provides a range of options that allow customers more options for receiving their orders based on their needs, including Ship-from Store, In-Store Pickup, and Ship-to Store fulfillment options. Any or all of these options can be provided to customers in a way that makes sense for both customers and the business. The Radial Store Fulfillment delivery options allow businesses leverage their physical assets - both stores and people - as strategic advantages to drive sales efficiencies and to provide improved quality of service to their customers.
Store fulfillment integrations can be configured stand-alone or in combination with other Radial web service offerings to provide a full suite of capabilities to enable online sales and fulfillment.
Radial Store Fulfillment delivers modular, cloud-based omnichannel solutions to turn your stores into active fulfillment centers. Just like that, you can maximize the breadth of your inventory, save on shipping costs, and maximize your retail associates’ time with Ship-from Store, In-Store Pickup, and Ship-to Store options.
Many retailers report that up to 50% of their eCommerce sales are picked up in-store. Customers love the convenience and choice, and not paying shipping fees. Once they’re in the door, you have even more opportunities to expand the customer experience and the size of their order.
Radial In-Store Pickup streamlines the entire process with an intuitive user interface your store associates can use to easily pick and stage orders, and to create positive pickup experiences for your customers.
"Out of stock" situations are the quickest way to make your hard-won eCommerce customers unhappy. By shipping orders directly from stores, there’s more opportunity for you to fulfill the order, which saves incremental revenue that might have otherwise been lost due to stock outs.
On average, our clients see a 20% or more increase in sales, and a 33% increase in margins by selling merchandise prior to end-of-season discounts. Plus, Radial’s industry-leading shipping costs and delivery times improve customer loyalty—and your bottom line. You simply can’t do Ship-from Store for less.
For some customers, buying online and shipping to a nearby store makes the most sense. That way, your customers have more choices, and enjoy the peace of mind they get knowing that their package is safe and secure, while you leverage your inventory locations to make the sale a reality. When your customer arrives, chances are, they will shop around. That kind of flexibility and convenience creates happy customers and more sales for you.
Radial Store Fulfillment allows businesses to tailor their delivery options to meet the needs of both their business and their customers. Web stores may choose to offer any or all of the fulfillment options made available through store fulfillment to their customers. No matter which of the fulfillment options the business decides to offer to its customers, there is some initial configuration and setup required. This setup and configuration will need to be done on both the participating web store side and the Radial Store Fulfillment side in order to allow for proper integration between the two platforms.
The first step in being able to fulfill using store fulfillment is providing web store customers with the ability to select a store. There are any number of mapping services available on the web today, from MapQuest to Waze to Google Maps. Any one of these web-based mapping services provides a web service API that allows integration through other web sites. Choose one of these services and integrate it into the web store such that customers are able to provide a postal code and receive a map of that area.
The second step is creating a list of brick-and-mortar store locations and identifying which of these stores are eligible for store fulfillment. The store locations should be stored in a datastore that is local to and accessible by the web store. At a minimum, the locations must include the longitude and latitude values for the store, a store number or identifier, and a flag indicating if the location is eligible to participate in store fulfillment. The locations may also include any number of other pieces of data associated with a store, such as the store name and address, store hours, store contact information, or any number of other pieces of information that customers might want to know for a given location.
Using a combination of the mapping service and the store locations based on longitude and latitude, a list of participating stores can be produced to allow a customer to choose the location that they desire. Many mapping services allow the integration with their mapping service to be augmented by offering additional customizartions of the map results, such as allowing customized map icons for designated locations or show additional information for a location, such as a store name or store number. Alternatively or additionally, a listing of valid stores can be displayed to customers to allow them to select the location that they desire. Research the chosen mapping service for your web site to design the best customer experience.
Identifying physical store locations through integration with a web-based mapping service will allow customers to find participating stores, however this doesn’t take into account item availability at those locations. In order to give customers a complete picture for store fulfillment, item availability should also be accounted for. In order to track inventory at store locations, the Radial store fulfillment platform will first need to know about these locations. The same list of brick-and-mortar stores that was provided to the web store should also be provided to Radial. These stores will then be created in Radial store fulfillment as disctibution centers (DCs) and be eligible for tracking inventory at each location. It is important that these store locations include a flag that identifies them as eligible for participation in store fulfillment delivery.
Next, Radial must receive the catalog of items available for sale by the brand. This catalog is delivered as a feed called the Item Master. In the web store, items that are eligible for store fulfillment should be indicated via a flag. This will allow the web store to know which products support these delivery options and to provide related messaging and functionality around these delivery options to the customer. Note that some items may only be flagged as being eligible for certain delivery methods, such as being eligible for ISPU but not also for STS. Consult the Item Master documentation for more details.
Once Radial has a list of store locations and the items available in the catalog, inventory levels for the items available at the stores locations can be established and maintained. In order to do that, stores must provide inventory level updates to Radial through a separate Inventory Feeds process. An initial feed is sent to establish the base inventory at all locations. Thereafter, the store inventory feed is sent on a periodic basis in order to update and validate the store locations’ inventory levels. Consult the Store Inventory Feed documentation for more details.
On demand inventory checks are handled through RESTful web service calls made by the web store. Once the initial setup of the web store has been completed, the specific integration between Radial and the web store may vary based on the delivery option.
The Ship-from Store (SFS) delivery option enables businesses to use their stores as regional distribution centers (DCs) through robust order allocation routines to select the store which is best suited for fulfilling specific orders. Customers select merchandise based on available-to-promise inventory that is marked as available in the store locations. The OMS routes the eligible portions of the order to participating stores. Store associates are notified and use the Store Fulfillment system to generate pick lists, shipping labels, and packing slips for the pending orders. Once the orders are picked and the items confirmed against each order, the order is packed and staged as “awaiting shipping”. When the carrier picks up the order, the carrier scans the order, which is sent to the Store Fulfillment system to update the order status and deduct inventory from the location.
When the customer adds the item to their cart from the product page, make a REST call to Radial’s Get Inventory Quantity operation. This confirms that there is inventory available to allow the customer to add the desired quantity of the item to their cart. If the customer is attempting to add more quantity that is available per the response from this call, appropriate messaging should be displayed to the customer and they should be prompted to adjust their quantity before adding the item(s) to their cart.
After the customer has provided their shipping information on the shipping details page, make a REST call to Radial’s Get Inventory Details operation. The response from this call will confirm the available inventory at the time of the call, as well as provide expected delivery information and the address of the location from which the inventory will be sourced (as well as provide more accurate tax calculations to the customer).
[NOTE: Businesses that support SFS will automatically have any store locations that they have identified as eligible to fulfill customer web orders considered as a potential sourcing location. Radial’s order sourcing rules will evaluate the best location for sourcing the items for the order. The response to the Get Inventory Details will identify the locations where the items for the order will be sourced – whether those be a traditional warehouse or an eligible store location.]
When the customer submits the order, make a REST call to Radial’s Create Inventory Allocation operation. This will allocation the inventory for the items in the order in the OMS, removing them from the available inventory amount.
The In-Store Pickup (ISPU) delivery option updates inventory in real-time, providing businesses with a fast, easy, and reliable option to “commit” the retail store sale while the customer is online. Customers select merchandise based upon a webstore display that shows which local store has the product available using available-to-promise ISPU inventory. The OMS transmits selected items to the Store Fulfillment system, which routes the order to the appropriate store. Store associates are notified to pick and stage the order. The order is confirmed as “ready for Pickup” to trigger email communication to the customer. As customers retrieve their orders, the store associates confirm that the order has been picked up in the Store Fulfillment system which then updates the order status, and deducts inventory from the reserved location.
Web stores may elect to display messaging to the customer that eligible items “Can be picked up in your local store” on the product page.
All ISPU eligible items should provide a method of selecting a store location for pick up to the customer. The method of implementating this functionality is entirely up to the web store, whether that means imbedding the store selection functioanlity into a dedicated area of the page or displaying a store selection popup to the customer when the link is clicked.
Use the web store’s integration with a mapping service to allow the customer to provide a postal code and execute a search for stores near that location. The result of the search will be a list of store locations within the specified radius of the postal code provided by the customer.
Make a REST call to Radial’s In-Store Quantity operation. In the request, supply both the item ID and the store identifiers for all locations returned by Step 3 above. The response will contain the quantity available for sale at each location provided in the request.
Using a combination of both the store locations returned by the mapping service and the results of the In-Store Quantity call above, programatically exclude those locations returned by the mapping service that do not have available inventory as shown in the reponse from the In-Store Quantity call.
Implement the behavior in the web store such that STS becomes a fall back option to ISPU.This involves including all store locations from the mapping service, typically ordered in terms of increasing distance, and identifying to the customer which stores have inventory immediately available (based on the results of the In-Store Quantity call), and which do not but can still be selected for the STS delivery option.
Display to the customer the list of store locations resulting from Step 4 above. The customer can then select a store from the list where they would like to pick up the item. This location and the chosen delivery option should be saved in the users shopping cart session for this order.
When the customer adds the item to their cart from the product page, make a REST call to Radial’s Get Inventory Quantity operation. This confirms that there is inventory available to allow the customer to add the desired quantity of the item to their cart. If the customer is attempting to add more quantity that is available per the response from this call, appropriate messaging should be displayed to the customer and they should be prompted to adjust their quantity before adding the item(s) to their cart.
[NOTE: Be certain to supply the correct delivery option selected by the customer when making this call]
After the customer has provided their shipping information on the shipping details page, make a REST call to Radial’s Get Inventory Details operation. The response from this call will confirm the available inventory at the time of the call, as well as provide expected delivery information and the address of the location from which the inventory will be sourced (as well as provide more accurate tax calculations to the customer).
[NOTE: The customer’s chosen delivery option should already be saved in their cart session. This option should be pre-selected to the customer on the shipping options page in checkout.]
When the customer submits the order, make a REST call to Radial’s Create Inventory Allocation operation. This will allocation the inventory for the items in the order in the OMS, removing them from the available inventory amount.
The Ship-to Store (STS) delivery option leverages inventory in direct-to-consumer warehouses, other participating retail stores, or dropship fulfillment to allow customers to have their order delivered to a selected retail store when that store does not have the inventory readily available on hand. Customers select merchandise and request a participating store location for pick up. The OMS sends the selected items to the fulfillment location and transmits the order to the Store Fulfillment system when shipped by the fulfillment location. Upon package arrival at the store, the store associate scans the carrier tracking code or manually enters the order in the Store Fulfillment system to update package as received at the location. This update triggers notifications to the OMS, updates the order as “ready for Pickup,” and sends an email notification to the customer alerting them to pick up their order at the store.
[NOTE: If implementing both the ISPU and STS delivery options in the web store, see the In-Store Pick Up Workflow.]
Web stores may elect to display messaging to the customer that eligible items “Can be shipped to your local store” on the product page.
All STS eligible items should provide a method of selecting a store location for pick up to the customer. The method of implementating this functionality is entirely up to the web store, whether that means imbedding the store selection functionality into a dedicated area of the page or displaying a store selection popup to the customer when the link is clicked.
Use the web store’s integration with a mapping service to allow the customer to provide a postal code and execute a search for stores near that location. The result of the search will be a list of store locations within the specified radius of the postal code provided by the customer.
Display to the customer the list of store locations resulting from Step 3 above. The customer can then select a store from the list where they would like to have their item delivered. This location and the chosen delivery option should be saved in the users shopping cart session for this order.
When the customer adds the item to their cart from the product page, make a REST call to Radial’s Get Inventory Quantity operation. This confirms that there is inventory available to allow the customer to add the desired quantity of the item to their cart. If the customer is attempting to add more quantity that is available per the response from this call, appropriate messaging should be displayed to the customer and they should be prompted to adjust their quantity before adding the item(s) to their cart.
After the customer has provided their shipping information on the shipping details page, make a REST call to Radial’s Get Inventory Details operation. The response from this call will confirm the available inventory at the time of the call, as well as provide expected delivery information and the address of the location from which the inventory will be sourced (as well as provide more accurate tax calculations to the customer).
[NOTE: The customer’s chosen delivery option should already be saved in their cart session. This option should be pre-selected to the customer on the shipping options page in checkout.]
When the customer submits the order, make a REST call to Radial’s Create Inventory Allocation operation. This will allocation the inventory for the items in the order in the OMS, removing them from the available inventory amount.
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