Pet Supplies Plus Trims Inventory and Improves Order-Fill Rates With Manhattan Associates - See more

People are doting on their pets like never before. To up its competitive advantage in this billion-dollar-a-year industry, Pet Supplies Plus, a leading specialty pet retailer in the United States, transitioned from an all-franchise business model to one with corporate stores and consolidated its distribution centers (DCs) from two sites to one. To enable the DC conversion, Pet Supplies Plus needed a new inventory management system. It chose Inventory Optimization (IO) from Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH), and following this year's implementation, Pet Supplies Plus saw a 95 percent in-stock level, a 99 percent plus order-fill rate and then a ten percent reduction of inventory value.

Additionally, Pet Supplies Plus lowered its overall inventory investment while improving customer service. It can now hit its desired in-stock levels and achieve inventory turns in the most profitable way, overcoming complex retail, wholesale and omni-channel inventory management challenges. Before the Manhattan implementation, Pet Supplies Plus replenished its inventories manually from a network of wholesalers. Standardizing and automating DC replenishment was a key part of the program's success.

"The forecasting and replenishment challenges faced included merchandise categories that had fast and slow-moving items, promotions, perishables and import considerations," said Scott Fenwick, senior director, Manhattan Associates. "The nature of the company's business presents a high degree of inventory complexity that had to be optimized in order to achieve the maximum return on investment.

Pet Supplies Plus also relies on Manhattan's leading Warehouse Management for Open Systems (WMOS), Labor Management (LM), Slotting Optimization and Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) to run its supply chain. "We had four main goals in deploying Manhattan's solutions: simplify business processes, reduce inventory investment, improve order accuracy and increase labor productivity," said Jeff Suttle, senior vice president, supply chain, Pet Supplies Plus. "The features and functions of Manhattan's solutions are very robust and flexible. We've already seen big value from this investment." - See more at: http://www.manh.com/resources/press-releases/2016/10/03/pet-supplies-plus-trims-inventory-and-improves-order-fill-rates#sthash.GNuIxTNS.dpuf