Do you know what products you have available for sale in each store? Can your stores manage their inventory without depending on the central office, but at the same time, giving it total visibility of their transactions?

These are very clear and specific needs for any store that wants to efficiently and effectively manage their inventory while offering a better service to their clients. Sometimes, depending on the central office to perform local inventory functions, can act to the detriment of the quality of the service provided.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail, there is no need to sacrifice inventory autonomy or central office visibility, because both work in an integrated way, improving the service each store is capable of delivering, maximizing resources and providing a better return on investment.

Four inventory functions that can be done from the store are:

Receipt of purchase orders: For control purposes, purchase orders are managed from the central office, however, the store has the capacity to receive the merchandise, and directly enter the quantities received through the POS. Once these quantities are entered, they can be used and handled locally only, or they can be “confirmed” by granting reception visibility to the central office. The quantities that the store receives, are displayed in the central office, inside the purchase order, in the “Received Now” field.

Between-Store Transfers: When working with transfers between stores, a store is defined as the origin and another as the destination. In the store of origin, the transfer is registered as an order request to be withdrawn in the store (“Pickup Request”), when the transfer is executed, the quantities are confirmed (“commit”) and sent to the central office. Once the information is received by the central office, these quantities are shown in the “Send Now” field of the transfer order. The destination store, the transfer appears as a request for reception; as in the case of sending from the originating store, when receiving the items of the transfer, the quantities are entered in the POS, and when they are confirmed (“commit”), they are sent to the central office, who can have visibility and monitor the whole process.

Inventory Counts: Scheduled and non-scheduled inventory counts can be performed. Scheduled counts are initiated from the central office, creating an inventory count request that is sent to the store, it can discriminate the items or request that all be counted; this physical count of the inventory enters the quantity in existence of each requested article through the POS. The unscheduled counts are initiated from the store and the information of these is also captured through the POS. Non-scheduled counts do not have a pre-defined list of items to be counted. In any case, programmed or non-scheduled, when the amounts are confirmed (committed), these are sent to the central office, and once validated, proceed to publish them so the data is accessible from Dynamics AX.

Inventory Search: This functionality allows you to check the inventory of a particular item between several stores, so if a customer wants an item that is not in the current store, it can be located where it is available and either request a transfer to this store so that the customer can retrieve it when it arrives, or refer the customer to the appropriate location.

All these features, integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail, along with much more focused on other needs of the modern retailer, makes this solution the wisest choice to update, keeping the door open to the future evolution of your business.

Put your stores at the forefront of your competition, improving local inventory management without losing the ability to centrally manage and monitor them, leverage all the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail.

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 or contact us here.