x-Chain Inventory

X-Chain represents our software platform for the integration of Supply, Fulfillment, Retail and Value chains into a congruent Merchandising system. The X-Chain platform provides the essential work flow requirements of a growing and diverse product centric enterprise in addition to the standard inventory and sales requirements which are expected.

The primary objective of the X-Chain platform is to provide for many different sales channels into a common and uniform work flow for your product development and distribution enteprise by encapsulating internet presence requirements, retail store front requirements and the logistics and supply chain requirements into the right places of the Merchandising effort.

The X-Chain platform comprises a collection of Standard Applications, Web Interfaces, Workflow Applications, Maintenance Applications and Analysis Interfaces.

Maintenance applications are those applications which support the management of the web and workflow system as a whole by duplicating the functionality of the Web Interfaces and employing additional interfaces for add hoc processing of important batch processing steps such as Account Billing, Data Archival, Batch Communications and other items where not otherwise triggered or automated. This also includes tasks in support of definition (new relationships if not automated), information changes (contact information) and information communication such as new events and announcements (news, events, employment positions) and reporting elements required to identify the areas of use, access statistics, missing informaton and other policy monitoring aspect of the system to ensure that the data consumer is being serviced appropriately.

The Merchandise Inventory is maintained in the CapeTown Enterprise Commerce System in an ongoing and perpetual nature. In cases where the inventory is an off-line inventory such as a remote invoicing warehouse or remote invoicing retail store front, inventories are maintained at both the central system location and the remote and brought in sync on a transaction by transaction basis as those transactions filter up the organizational hierarchy.

Inventory Organization

The inventory is maintained at the Line of Business Level and the Line of Business Store discrete level. This allows for cost of sales and total figures to be maintained at a higher system level as the system is in use. The system provides for 100% on-line updates and can scale to any magnitude supported by the back end relational database engine and server equipment.

All aspects pertaining to inventory transactions are maintained on both the LOB and STORE inventory masters with back up detail level data logged for each discrete activity. All audit tracking is maintained for Receipts, On Purchase Order, In transit, Return to Vendor, Stock Adjustments, Sales, On Sales Order, Return of Sales and Inventory Transfers both on a quantitative and valuation basis. All currency conversions are maintained in keeping with the currency on the line of business and the source and destination currencies involved in each transaction.

Inventory Counting

The system supports unlimited inventory counts that are created at the Commerce side of the system, communicated to the counting destination and then communicated back to the Commerce side of the system. This allows for both full physical counts and cycle counts. The system performs analysis on both the system side of the equation and the physical side of the equation so that system oriented issues are not relevant in the physical count of what may be an off-line location.

The counting procedure is either paper based or scanner based dependant upon the definition of the count. The Logistics system takes over when Operational Centers take part of physical inventories due to the location/product nature of those inventories. The system provides for all adjustment processing both at the counting location and the head office commerce side of the system. The system also allows head office activities to move forward while the count is performed. Developed in such a fashion as to allow any number of inventory counters and keying staff to complete the task at hand. The system performs local adjustments and head office adjustments as required to bring the inventory in line.

Inventory Tagging and Ticketing

The system supports the tagging and ticketing of merchandise items utilizing bar code capable printers. The system provides for a flexible printing format that allows you to use any printer device that uses an open format printer language. Some examples of common printers are Monarch, Zebra and TEC which are currently the supported bar code printers in CapeTown Enterprise.

The system manages ticketing types on a merchandise item basis which assists in the production of the correct outputs upon receipt of the product. These can also be over-rided when necessary.

Ticketing requests can be driven from the Product Explorer for single or multiple items in varying quantities like keying values into a spreadsheet and can also be document driven in the case of a Purchase Order, Transfer Order, Sales Order, Pick Document, and Receipt document.

Print Job Management

CapeTown Enterprise contains a printer driver application that manages enterprise label printers and connects these local printers to the global enterprise network by allowing printers to be managed. Printers can be set to automatic print or manual print modes and are defined with stock types as well so that jobs don't print on improper stock and like jobs are processed at the same time. This application provides the ability to send label jobs to remote printers and define any number of printers in the system for second to none performance.

Creating and maintaining a merchandising database is a critical and complex task that involves the collaboration of many people in any organization no matter the size. In addition to Image++ there are many other main stream facets to the management of a merchandise inventory. The ability to manage multiple inventory types and the classification of those types is essential.

CapeTown Enterprise Commerce provides a robust inventory architecture that allows for single level items and complex style level items (size and color, width and height etc) to exist within the same database structure. In addition SET items and Single SET items are supported. SET items relate to items that are combined in a bill of materials and single SET items refer to cross reference items relating to a master item so that it may exist in multiple spheres of your inventory architecture.

Merchandise Organization

The merchandise is organized into a four tier; Division. Department, Category and Class hierarchical structure permitting your organization to use all four levels or a sub set of this organization. Each level beyond Division supports the ability for definitions to cross the parent levels or be specific to a parent level.

This organization is used throughout the system, promoting the browsing of merchandise information in all areas of the system where product searching is required

Strategic Business Units (SBU)

Strategic Business Units allow the merchandise to be organized on an independent basis from the Merchandise Hierarchy or above it. The SBU of an item is defined at the merchandise level and allows for an additional organization to exist, perhaps by manufacturer, product line or vendors, whatever your organization requires.

The SBU is also used throughout the system to promote the navigation of the inventory.

Features and Benefits

Unlimited Feature and Benefits text as well as sales notes and alternative items lines can exist in association with the merchandise information as well as customized sub titles within the text such as Promotion, Warrantee, etc. Enhancing the merchandise information

Scanning Support

CapeTown Enterprise supports UPC/EAN/ISBN and sku level scanning as well as multiple encoding support for those times when products need to be referenced by multiple codes, or the encoding changes and when you have stock of both items and don't want to create additional inventory maintenance items.

Multiple Vendor and Currency Support

Vendor Management and Multiple Vendors per product is fully supported and unlimited. Each vendor can also support a different currency under the same merchandise item. This is also automatically maintained when dealing with Lines of Business that have different currencies.

Customer loyalty is a factor that affects all businesses large and small and the ability to effectively manage loyalty promotions is a necessity and not an extra. CapeTown Computing has developed a specialized loyalty module that can be run independently or run in combination and interfaced with CapeTown Enterprise Commerce.

Multi-Level

CapeTown Enterprise Loyalty is a 32-bit Windows application that allows multiple loyalty programs to be defined within the context of a client and line of business, such as Retail or the Internet Store. Each participant is considered a promotion entity and these participant entities can exist within a parent and child architecture so that participant groups can be formed. This allows your business to create multiple promotions such as a VIP and a STANDARD customer promotion with one level such as customer and additional promotions that are perhaps more involved such as Retail Store Managers with Sales Person children at the second level and Customers on the last level that would exist as children under Sales People. These configurations are completely definable when the promotion is created and when interfaced with CapeTown Enterprise Commerce, customer transactions automatically filter into the promotion and points are defined as per the promotions definition.

The main advantage to this format is the ability to have a customer within multiple promotions while using the same transaction interface and same entity information such as business and home addressing.

Point Assignment

Entities/Participants each have their own account within a promotion and accumulate and redeem points from these accounts as prescribed by a pre-defined point assignment methodology. This methodology can be defined using a merchandise hierarchy for global assignments or at the discrete item level for more specific assignments and can be based upon dollar value or quantity. Points can also be assigned manually or via upload files for foreign transaction environments, including bonus point assignments. Point Invoice Forms can be printed and keyed into the system using the Invoice keying application for detailed point tracking and accumulation. The advantage of such a system over offline marketing campaigns is the ability to use customer purchase history in the definition of the point assignment methodology.

Statement Generation

Entities/Participants have the ability to have statements printed that are cumulative or prior balance forwarded with current activity. Statements can also be produced in group format where all entities that are children of the entity at that level are combined into one redeemable account. All of the reports and statements are definable and customizable, as they were defined in a Crystal Reports environment.

Participant and Point reports exist with multi-level reporting and provide a comprehensive detailed and summarized view of a promotions effectiveness.

Redemption

Depending upon your redemption strategy, point redemption is managed at the promotion and entity level thus providing for diverse redemption strategies for each promotion and a common participant database. Point redeemed for merchandise can be managed at the tender level within the transaction environment in CapeTown Enterprise or managed off-line with redemption values stored within the promotion in order to avoid duplicate redemption.

E-Loyalty Interface

Depending upon your redemption strategy, point redemption is managed at the promotion and entity level thus providing for diverse redemption strategies for each promotion and a common participant database. Point redeemed for merchandise can be managed at the tender level within the transaction environment in CapeTown Enterprise or managed off-line with redemption values stored within the promotion in order to avoid duplicate redemption. Through E-Store and E-SALES/E-TRADE interfaces customers can access their promotion information so that they can view their point balances, redeem online through a tender option and perform general maintenance issues such as change of address, etc.

Desktop applications that mirror the functions of the Web Interface are essential in ensuring there is redundancy and accuracy built into the system. It can be noted that internal use of the same Web Interface as the consumer user leads to fundamentally better Web Interface design, usage and practice. There are also the additonal requirements of bulk processing tasks which are essential to the overall process which may require a monitoring step in the workflow such as Billing Runs for example.

WebManagement provides the ability to define usage definition for new and existing users, access usage statistic reporting and policy reporting as well as the ability to add dynamic content to the Web Interface in areas where there is consistent change such as News, Events and Employment positions or other defined areas as your organization sees fit to implement.

The ability to communicate the usage of the system at a summarized and detailed level provides for assurances of use.