Scope for automation in retail sector is vast. Some of the key use cases are:

• Supply chain management: Supply chain management is the heart of retail activities. Automating supply chain processes such as order tracking, inventory level monitoring, shipment, order status tracking, reverse shipment, shipping notifications can help retailers to streamline their supply chain and reduce lead times.
• Order Management: Retailers today operate with various sales channels – offline stores, online ecommerce website, marketplace like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra etc, corporates, large stores, traders, distributors, and many others. This results in vast variations in the way orders are received, processed, entered in ERP system, tracked, and fulfilled. Automating these activities can make order management and order fulfilment into a seamless process.
• Invoice processing: Processing invoices is a time-consuming and repetitive task. Employees invariably deal with a huge amount of paperwork and spend several hours to process invoices. Automating invoice processing with Intelligent BOTs significantly reduces turnaround time, with improved accuracy and payment cycles. Paper-based invoices in different formats can be processed using Intelligent OCR technology.
• Inventory management: Retailers deal with erratic demands and having to maintain a high volume of inventory to make the product available on demand. This maintaining the right level of inventory can be a tricky and time-consuming process. RPA BOTs can monitor inventory levels, trigger alerts when stock levels are running low, and automatically reorder products when needed.
• Vendor reconciliation: A key Accounts Payable requirement that retailers deal with is to compare their accounts payable records with the corresponding records maintained by its vendors to ensure that both records match and to identify any discrepancies that need to be addressed. With most retailers working with hundreds of vendors, this process of reconciliation is extremely time consuming. Automating this process saves a significant amount of time, eliminates errors that may be introduced by manual data entry, and ensures accuracy in financial records.
• Payment reconciliation: Today, retailers are dealing with multiple sources of receiving payments for sales – cash, Credit and Debit cards, Mobile wallets such as Paytm, Google Pay, PhonePe, etc., Unified Payments Interface (UPI), electronic fund transfer services like IMPS, NEFT. Verifying financial records to ensure that all payments received have been properly recorded and accounted for can become a very time-consuming activity and when done manually can also be error prone. Automated payment reconciliation using RPA BOTs can save time and reduce errors by automating the process of matching payment data with accounting records, identify and resolve discrepancies more quickly, allowing retailers to improve their cash flow management and financial reporting.
• Sales Analytics: Retailers depend on analyzing sales data to drive decisions like new product introductions, trade promotions, understand customer behavior and preferences. Automating the process of collecting and collating sales data, performing various analysis, and generating real-time, data-driven reports can help retailers make more insightful business decisions impacting all areas of their business.
• Customer Support: Effective customer support is critical for retailers – happy customers lead to customer retention and repeat business. Hence capable 24×7 customer support is essential – automated RPA BOTs in conjunction with Chat bots can provide seamless customer support from assisting buyers to order payments to deliveries and handle after sales enquiries.