Unicommerce’s tech helps clients adapt to the ever-evolving industry needs
Unicommerce, established in 2012, is India’s largest e-commerce enablement SaaS platform, specialising in transaction processing for brands, sellers, and logistics providers. It offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for managing inventory, orders, returns, payments, and regulatory compliances across multiple online and offline channels. Serving over 3,600 clients, the company manages more than 8,300 warehouses and 2,900 stores, processing over 850 million annual transactions. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, MD & CEO Kapil Makhija discusses challenges and solutions for omni-channel brands and retailers.
What are the biggest challenges that textile-apparel companies face in implementing an effective omnichannel strategy?
Implementing an effective omnichannel strategy in the textile-apparel industry comes with several significant challenges that companies need to navigate:
Integration of technology platforms: One of the foremost challenges is integrating various technology platforms seamlessly across different channels (online stores, mobile apps, physical stores). This integration is crucial for providing a consistent customer experience, real-time inventory visibility, and synchronised sales and marketing efforts.
Data management and analytics: Omnichannel strategies rely heavily on data analytics to understand customer behaviour across channels. However, managing and analysing large volumes of data from multiple sources can be complex. Companies need robust systems for data collection, integration, and analysis to derive actionable insights and personalise customer experiences effectively.
Supply chain coordination and fulfilment complexity: Ensuring a seamless supply chain across all channels is another significant challenge. It involves synchronising inventory levels, order fulfilment processes, and logistics operations to meet customer expectations for fast and reliable delivery, regardless of the channel they choose. Companies may need to optimise their warehouse operations, adopt flexible fulfilment options (such as ship-from-store or click-and-collect), and manage returns efficiently across channels to successfully implement omnichannel strategies.
Consistent brand experience and customer engagement: Maintaining a consistent brand image and customer experience across different channels poses a challenge. Moreover, customers expect a cohesive and personalised experience whether they shop online, in-store, or through a mobile app. Ensuring consistent product information, pricing, promotions, and customer service standards across channels too, requires careful coordination. Omnichannel strategies need to leverage technology to enhance customer engagement through personalised recommendations, targeted marketing campaigns, and responsive customer service.
Organisational alignment: Implementing an omnichannel strategy requires alignment across various departments within the organisation, including marketing, sales, IT, operations, and customer service. Ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goals and understands the importance of seamless channel integration is essential for success.
What are the emerging trends in consumer behaviour that textile-apparel companies should be aware of, and how can they adapt to these trends?
Omnichannel has proved to be the best fit for a segment like textile-apparel, which witnesses fast-changing trends and requires greater supply chain agility. We have seen offline brands adopting technology to build and grow their online presence, whereas online-first brands are entering the offline market.
As a rising trend, there has been adoption of AR and VR where new-age brands are offering try-and-buy experiences to the customer.
Brands continue to provide services like buy online return in store (BORIS), buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), reserve online pick up in store (ROPIS) and endless aisle among other touchpoints for enhanced customer experience. As a result, customers now enjoy the flexibility of utilising different channels throughout their shopping journey, initiating their search on one channel and completing their purchase on another. This is going to increase with time.
How has Unicommerce tailored its solutions specifically for the textile-apparel industry compared to other retail sectors?
Unicommerce serves a wide range of fashion and apparel brands. Some of the features that Unicommerce’s platform tailors for the apparel industry include:
Apparel relishes omnichannel the most: Apparel brands work on the theorem of inventory width. This helps them in offering a host of options to their customers without maintaining a bulk of inventory. Unicommerce’s omnichannel retail management solution enables brands and retailers to trace the SKU based on customer orders, no matter at which warehouse or store it is placed.
Needs real-time inventory synchronisation: For channels to know that brands, product sizes or styles are going to go out of stock, brands need to have their inventory synced across all online and offline channels every minute. Unicommerce’s inventory management solution allows brands to reduce unfulfillable orders by keeping track of their inventory across channels.
Image-assisted workflows help improve warehouse productivity: Warehouses of apparel brands are required to follow a series of quality checks while sorting the SKUs for their orders. Unicommerce provides image-assisted workflows at the warehouse allowing brands to reduce the cognitive workload of the warehouse staff and reducing the possibility of errors. This helps in processing orders faster.
Advanced bundle management provides an edge: Unicommerce’s bundle management feature assists apparel brands in effortlessly offering different bundled options, without having to physically create the bundles in advance. This means, if a customer wants to place an order for a shirt, a pant and a jacket, the same inventory can be used for multiple bundle options since the inventory is not physically blocked in advance. This optimises inventory utilisation for brands and raises the average order value.
What are the key challenges that textile and apparel companies face in inventory management, and how does Unicommerce address these challenges?
Apparel brands face numerous challenges, including managing customised order allocation and inventory synchronisation, aligning multiple sales channels with offline stores, handling stock rotation to manage outdated inventory, and the difficulty of accurately predicting and managing demand, inventory, and logistics. However, the biggest challenge for these brands is the management of returns and cancellations, which requires a specialised approach and dedicated technology support.
Streamlining the return process: Implementing a streamlined return process helps expedite the return of products back into inventory. With Unicommerce’s returns management solution, managing returns becomes simple and efficient. This includes efficient processing of return requests, and prompt issuance of refunds or exchanges. By reducing the time it takes to process returns from across different channels, brands can minimise the impact on inventory levels and cash flow.
Reverse logistics optimisation: Optimising reverse logistics processes helps brands efficiently manage the transportation and handling of returned products. With 90+ integrations across logistics service providers, Unicommerce’s technology streamlines the movement of returned items from customers back to the warehouse or fulfilment centre. By minimising transportation costs and transit times, brands can expedite the return of products to inventory and reduce associated expenses.
Dynamic inventory management: The dynamic inventory management system enables brands to track returned items in real-time and quickly reintegrate them into inventory as available stock. This involves updating inventory records and SKU availability across all sales channels to reflect returned items that are ready for resale. By maintaining accurate inventory data, brands can prevent stockouts and ensure that returned products are promptly made available to customers for purchase.
UniReco: One of Unicommerce’s latest products UniReco uses an algorithm to match orders, payments, and returns across multiple marketplaces and provides businesses with a real-time view of their reconciliation status, so they can identify and resolve any discrepancies. Additionally, it offers updated and detailed reports of real-time costs and earnings, which is an essential planning pre-requisite for sellers as it enables them to efficiently manage their working capital.
Centralised returns leveraging omnichannel RMS: Unicommerce’s pioneered omnichannel retail management solution solves an age-old problem of stores being unable to process online returns. With Unicommerce’s technology, brands can manage returns of products from across stores, as well as other channels. If a customer purchased online and the product was dispatched from a store, the return is sent directly to the central warehouse, helping synchronisation of inventory and avoiding duplication.
How does Unicommerce ensure accurate inventory tracking for companies dealing with a high volume of SKUs, such as apparel brands?
The higher the volumes, the more effective the Unicommerce platform. Unicommerce’s technology is built on a robust product architecture. Its warehouse and inventory management system enables large transitions in a few clicks.
Unicommerce’s centralised view continuously monitors stock levels to maintain optimal inventory and prevent stockouts. Brand warehouses receive directives to manage order processing, utilising FIFO, FEFO, and LIFO methods to allocate inventory accurately by item, SKU, or batch. By meticulously tracking each inventory item across all SKUs, Unicommerce’s warehouse and inventory management system significantly reduces the risk of loss or misplacement.
With a clearly defined route for allocation of inventory to designated logistics partners, brands are able to improve accountability and minimise loss during shipment. In case of any discrepancies, Unicommerce’s audit mechanisms such as cycle counts swiftly identify and flag the errors which are easily taken care of by the warehousing staff.
Generally, apparel brands witness a high volume of forward as well as return orders and Unicommerce’s tech helps them tackle the operational challenges end-to-end, leading to an enhanced post-purchase experience for their end customers.
Can you discuss any notable trends in the textile-apparel industry that Unicommerce is helping its clients adapt to?
Unicommerce offers state-of-the-art technology to help clients adapt to the ever-evolving industry needs. Some of the recent initiatives include:
BORIS/BOPIS/ROPIS: Unicommerce’s advanced omnichannel RMS is enabling brands to offer services like BORIS, BOPIS, ROPIS etc. Customers can now buy and return products anywhere as per their convenience.
Ship from store: For any orders that the customer places online, brands now have the ability to have the product delivered to the customer from the store nearest to the customer’s location. This is improving delivery timelines and enhancing customer loyalty.
Endless Aisle: This feature allows brands to accept orders at their stores for any product that is currently out of stock. By getting it delivered at the customer’s doorstep, brands can ensure that they do not miss out on any sales opportunities.
How is technology transforming the supply chain and logistics processes within the textile-apparel industry?
E-commerce SaaS technology has laid the foundation of modern day supply chain and logistics processes. Right from the moment a customer clicks the buy button on a brand website or a marketplace, starts a backend process which continues till the customer receives the product. Unlike traditional supply chains, which used to have typical supply side and demand side manual processes, e-commerce supply chains are more agile and can adapt to the evolving industry changes.
With a strong integration network across industry levers, Unicommerce’s technology acts as a one-stop solution for apparel brands to start and scale their business. It presently has a network of 124 marketplaces and webstores, 90+ logistics service providers and 10+ ERP, POS and other software solutions integrated to its technology platform.
Companies which earlier used to source products from manufacturers and suppliers, can manage their B2B2C business from a unified dashboard with all records at the tips of their fingers. Technology has truly transformed every bit of India’s supply chain and logistics landscape.
How do data analytics and AI contribute to trend forecasting and inventory management in the apparel sector?
The apparel segment within fashion experiences faster trends than any other industry. Fashions change rapidly due to the constant demand for novelty and variety, with quickly adopted styles becoming unfashionable sooner. This trend has been further accelerated by the widespread growth of e-commerce across the country.
Trend Forecasting: The platform’s ML algorithms help detect patterns in historical data to predict future trends. They can recognise correlations between different variables like colour preferences, fabric choices, or seasonal trends.
Demand Forecasting: Unicommerce’s platform analyses historical sales data, leveraging AI algorithms and predicting future demand for specific products. This helps in optimising inventory levels, ensuring that popular items are well-stocked while minimising overstocking of slow-moving items.
Seasonal Adjustments: Unicommerce’s technology provides forecasts based on seasonal variations, promotional events, or external factors like weather patterns that influence consumer behaviour.
Optimised Replenishment: AI-driven systems can automatically reorder inventory based on predictive analytics, ensuring that stock levels are maintained without manual intervention.
Personalisation and Customer Insights: AI algorithms can segment customers based on preferences, purchasing behaviour, and demographic data. This segmentation helps in tailoring product offerings and marketing strategies to specific customer groups.
In what ways does Unicommerce support sustainable practices within the textile-apparel industry?
There is growing consumer awareness and demand for sustainable and ethically sourced fashion products in India. Technology is playing a key role in enabling transparency and traceability across the supply chain, from raw material sourcing to production and distribution. Technology, for example, is already being used to track the journey of products and verify their authenticity and sustainability credentials.
Reducing the possibilities of overproduction: Unicommerce helps brands and retailers optimise their inventory management processes. Moreover, utilising data analytics, Unicommerce enables brands to forecast demand more accurately. This reduces the likelihood of overproduction and helps align production with actual consumer demand.
Order consolidation: By facilitating order consolidation and streamlining logistics, Unicommerce helps minimise the carbon footprint associated with transportation and shipping.
Creating reselling opportunities: Efficient handling of returns reduces waste and ensures that returned products can be resold or recycled effectively, reducing environmental impact.
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