What’s In Your Inventory?

Manhattan Associates, which for years has helped merchants with inventory and fulfillment services, had a problem. It lacked point-of-sale (POS) support so it couldn’t accommodate many of the functions consumers increasingly are expecting retailers to provide, such as sales on showroom floors and other “clienteling” needs, where use of data analytics and omnichannel distribution combine to enhance the customer experience.

In today’s retail environment, consumers increasingly are expecting merchants to be able to accommodate their shopping needs, if not within one store then through another. Manhattan Associates’recent acquisition of GlobalBay Technologies from VeriFone Systems Inc. fills that hole, Brian Kinsella, Manhattan Associates vice president for order management, told PYMNTS.com in an interview this week. As a result of the GlobalBay deal, Manhattan Associates can accommodate multi-store handling of merchandise sales and shipment with a product scan and a push of a few buttons on an iPad.

“We’ve been providing solutions like buy online and pick up in store and helping stores improve  their inventory integrity, so now we have mobile comprehensive capabilities,” Kinsella said. “With payments and the disruption there that’s underway, it’s simply yet another reason for retailers to look at an adjunct mobile-POS service to bring these capabilities to life in the store.”

Not here? Then let’s check there

For example, say a shopper finds a shirt and pants at a store, but the matching jacket is the wrong size. Through GlobalBay’s POS technology and so-called “clienteling,” Manhattan Associates now can provide the merchant iPads on the floor to scan the shirt and pants for purchase, and then scan the jacket in look-up mode to see if another of its stores or the company’s fulfillment center has the right size in stock. The merchant or center then could either ship the jacket to the store where the customer bought the shirt or pants for a later pick up, or have it delivered to the customer’s home, all while also enabling immediate payment for all three purchases using the same mobile POS terminal.

GlobalBay provides the piece Manhattan Associates couldn’t previously support, which was the ability to accept cash and payment cards, including PIN-based purchases, on the floor, email digital receipts or print paper ones, and other online functions at the time of sale, Kinsella said.

The acquisition also helps Manhattan Associates’ merchant customers to be able to accommodate transactions like the one in the example without having to replace their aging POS equipment, at least not right away or all at once. Instead, it can supplement them with iPads so they can handle transactions on the floor, while also enabling them to accommodate other modern POS services, such as chip card or mobile-wallet acceptance, Kinsella said.

Enterprise connected

The systems also communicates with stores and fulfillment centers throughout the enterprise, thus making the entire operation, stores included, online fulfillment centers, Kinsella added. “With omnichannel, it  foundationally interconnects customers and inventory, so fulfillment is across the enterprise,” he said.

Manhattan Associates will continue to work with VeriFone products, such as the sleeves the company provides merchants that goes over their iPad Minis. VeriFone also retained GlobalBay’s merchant solution for small retailers, which the company will rename later.