Black Friday: How to Manage Inventory and Enjoy Your Holiday at the Same Time

Thanksgiving should be a holiday for all of us to take a much needed breather and spend some quality time with our friends and family. But if you work in retail, what should be a holiday usually turns into early mornings, late nights, or no vacation at all. In order for customers to shop on Black Friday, it takes others to leave their holiday early to stock shelves, man registers, or be on call for those on the front lines. Even the corporate office doesn’t get a break; if one store is open, there is someone back at the office too. With more stores open on Thanksgiving Day, more and more of us have to cut our holiday short.

Be Home for the Holidays

We can’t all be REI and close for Black Friday, but we can still find ways to make it home for Thanksgiving. When I set out to create our iKIS™ demand forecasting and supply chain solution, I wanted to make sure I built in features that made my customers lives easier. During the holidays, I find two features that I am especially thankful for.

Inventory Management Can be Different in more than a Title

SaaS – “Software as a Service” means that instead of installing software on all your computers, you can access it anywhere in the world via the cloud. Our customers can review sales or manage demand forecasts from their home computer or their smart phone without any additional equipment or licenses. This allows them to be home or on vacation with their families more, and still keep an eye on their business.

Exception Management – We designed our system with robust Exception Management tools to allow our customers to manage the details of their business quickly and with less hassle. Instead of digging thru reports for hours the Monday after Black Friday, our customers can set up custom alerts and have them delivered any time. Alerts can even be texted to you so if something changes, you’ll know about it right away. Going to be out of reach? Delegate your alerts so they can be addressed before they balloon into bigger problems.

Maybe it is Time for a Trip – Beach Bound?

There are plenty of other ways iKIS™ saves our customers time and money, but these two in particular make it easier to sneak in a vacation without feeling like you are abandoning the office. Need these two features in your life? Contact us today to learn more or set up a demo.
From all of us at Data Profits, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving (and try not to work too hard).

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Stuart D

Stuart Dunkin is a strategic visionary who leads by calling on his broad range of experience as a former retail executive as well as a consultant for top retailers and for the E3/JDA software company. He founded Data Profits to solve a real-world problem plaguing retailers today – the disjointed relationship between supply chain data, people and business goals. He has experienced first-hand the challenges and frustrations that occur when decisions are made based on wrong data, which often leads to the wrong actions being taken with crippling results like overstock, out-of-stock, and increased working capital.
Stuart graduated from Auburn University, with bachelor of science in business administration.

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