The retail industry is facing unprecedented challenges, such as changing consumer behavior, increased competition, and supply chain disruptions. To survive and thrive in this new reality, retailers need to optimize their business processes, reduce costs, and enhance customer experience.

Process mining and process automation are two powerful technologies that can help retailers achieve these goals. Process mining is a technique that uses data from various sources, such as transaction logs, user interactions, and system events, to discover, analyze, and improve business processes. Process automation is a technology that enables the execution of repetitive tasks by software robots, such as filling forms, copying data, or sending emails.

In this article, we will explore how process mining and process automation can benefit the retail industry in three key areas: inventory management, order fulfillment, and customer service.

Inventory Management

Inventory management is a critical process for retailers, as it affects their profitability, cash flow, and customer satisfaction. However, many retailers still rely on manual methods or outdated systems to track and manage their inventory levels, which can lead to errors, inefficiencies, and waste.

Process mining can help retailers gain a clear and accurate picture of their inventory flows across different channels, locations, and products. By analyzing data from sources such as point-of-sale systems, warehouse management systems, and RFID tags, process mining can reveal how inventory is ordered, received, stored, moved, and sold. Process mining can also identify bottlenecks, deviations, and anomalies in the inventory process, such as overstocking, understocking, stockouts, shrinkage, or theft.

Process automation can help retailers streamline and optimize their inventory operations by automating tasks such as data entry, reconciliation, reporting, or forecasting. For example, process automation can enable retailers to automatically update their inventory records based on real-time sales data, generate purchase orders based on predefined rules or algorithms, or send alerts or notifications when inventory levels reach certain thresholds.

Order Fulfillment

Order fulfillment is another vital process for retailers, as it affects their operational efficiency, delivery speed, and customer loyalty. However, many retailers face challenges in fulfilling orders from multiple channels (such as online, offline, or omnichannel), sources (such as suppliers or distributors), and destinations (such as stores or customers). Order fulfillment often involves complex and fragmented workflows that require coordination and collaboration among different stakeholders (such as employees or partners).

Process mining can help retailers understand and improve their order fulfillment process by visualizing the end-to-end flow of orders from creation to delivery. By analyzing data from sources such as e-commerce platforms, ERP systems, and shipping providers, process mining can show how orders are processed, shipped, and delivered. Process mining can also measure the performance of the order fulfillment process, such as cycle time, throughput, and service level. Process mining can also detect problems and inefficiencies in the order fulfillment process, such as delays, errors, or rework.

Process automation can help retailers automate and accelerate their order fulfillment process by executing tasks such as order validation, allocation, picking, packing, or invoicing. For example, process automation can enable retailers to automatically validate orders against inventory availability, allocate orders to the optimal fulfillment location, pick orders using barcode scanners or voice recognition, pack orders using smart packaging solutions, or invoice orders using electronic documents.

Customer Service

Customer service is a key differentiator for retailers, as it influences their brand reputation, customer retention, and revenue growth. However, many retailers struggle to provide consistent and personalized customer service across different channels (such as phone, email, or chat), scenarios (such as inquiries, complaints, or returns), and segments (such as new or loyal customers).

Process mining can help retailers enhance their customer service quality by analyzing data from sources such as CRM systems, call center systems, and social media platforms. Process mining can reveal how customers interact with the retailer through different touchpoints, how customer service agents handle customer requests or issues, and how customer feedback or satisfaction is collected and acted upon. Process mining can also evaluate the effectiveness of the customer service process by tracking metrics such as response time, resolution time, first contact resolution rate, or net promoter score. Process mining can also uncover gaps and opportunities in the customer service process by identifying root causes of customer dissatisfaction or churn.

Process automation can help retailers improve their customer service efficiency by automating tasks such as data retrieval, verification, or update. For example, process automation can enable retailers to automatically retrieve customer information from various systems or databases based on customer ID or phone number; verify customer identity or eligibility based on predefined criteria or rules; or update customer records based on changes or actions taken. Process automation can also help retailers augment their customer service capabilities by integrating with other technologies such as chatbots, natural language processing (NLP), or sentiment analysis. For example, process automation can enable retailers to use ai powered chatbots to provide 24/7 customer support, use NLP to understand customer queries or intents, or use sentiment analysis to gauge customer emotions or moods.

Conclusion

Process mining and process automation are complementary technologies that can help retailers optimize their business processes, reduce costs, and enhance customer experience. By combining the insights from process mining with the actions from process automation, retailers can achieve a higher level of process excellence and competitive advantage.