New Survey Reveals 67% of Companies Experience Shrinkage in Shipping
OneRail, an innovative provider of solutions in last mile omnichannel fulfillment, announces the launch of a new Inventory Visibility solution within its OmniPoint® cloud-based platform to address the growing challenge of product shrinkage that shippers face.
“Traditionally, managing inventory visibility has been mainly addressed within the four walls of a warehouse or distribution center”
Product shrinkage (the loss of inventory) during transport is a pervasive problem for manufacturers and retailers, as it erodes profit margins and undermines trust in transportation providers. To get to the heart of how and when it happens along the supply chain, OneRail commissioned an independent research firm to survey 300 logistics leaders about ensuring the integrity of product delivery. The survey revealed that 88 percent of respondents acknowledge a direct correlation between real-time delivery tracking and decreased customer claims for missing products. Additionally, nearly half of respondents reported that lack of real-time data was their top pain point when tracking inventory.
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“The survey confirmed what we’ve observed in the industry, that in fact, 97 percent of logistics leaders report that shrinkage due to theft and missing products is a top challenge,” said OneRail Founder and CEO Bill Catania. “We developed OmniPoint Inventory Visibility as a solution to eliminate shrink and help our customers meet their on-time in-full (OTIF) standards by providing detailed real-time in-transit reporting.”
“Traditionally, managing inventory visibility has been mainly addressed within the four walls of a warehouse or distribution center,” said OneRail Chief Product and Technology Officer Chris Kucharski. “A big challenge shippers face is lack of visibility as to where the breakdown is in the supply chain when inventory goes missing, as well as who is responsible. With OmniPoint Inventory Visibility, our customers who are used to receiving last mile tracking can get that same level of intelligence on their shipments further upstream into the middle and first mile of the journey.
“The OmniPoint solution provides in-transit visibility that tracks orders down to the SKU level — offering much more granularity than at the pallet level — regardless of the distribution channel it is on,” Kucharski continued.
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OneRail’s OmniPoint Inventory Visibility solution tracks the movement of product orders down to the item level by integrating with other management systems that provide inventory, order and transportation data to offer real-time location status. One of the critical components of bringing this solution to life is OneRail’s open API, which can ingest any data source, providing customers a single source for full visibility of their inventory — whether inbound or outbound. OneRail’s solution accepts scan data as products move in and out of facilities through its mobile app or other third-party sources for easy and quick implementation.
Additional survey findings include:
- Causes of shrinkage
- Top pain points for tracking inventory
- Financial impact of shrinkage
- How logistics leaders track deliveries
- Companies’ top strategies for combating shrink
Overall, OneRail’s report shows that retailers and wholesalers are looking for technology solutions to help them address missing inventory and connect the dots between facilities and in-transit.