case study
Global Omnichannel Transformation:
Scalable Order Management & Real-Time Inventory Visibility for VF Corporation
Founded
1899
Headquarters
Denver, Colorado
Industry
Apparel and Footwear
Number of Brands
30
Abstract
VF Corporation had already implemented the IBM Sterling OMS (OMoC – Order Management On Cloud) suite including Call Center (COM) and Store Engagement (SOM) for a few of their brands in the US region. They wanted to roll out the omnichannel commerce capabilities to multiple brands across all geographies (Canada, Europe and Asia) in a streamlined manner and in a cost effective way.
The Challenge
1. Inventory Accuracy, Safety Factors, and Performance Lag
- High Cancellation Rates: Product Listing Pages (PLP) and Product Detail Pages (PDP) relied on cached inventory updates rather than live availability. Promising items that were out of stock resulted in frequent order cancellations and poor customer satisfaction.
- Slow Enterprise Synchronization: Syncing daily inventory across 4 major Distribution Centers (DCs) and 1,000+ retail stores into OMS and Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) was slow, creating critical blind spots during high-traffic peak seasons.
- Style-Level Complexity: On the PDP, fetching accurate real-time inventory availability at the style level posed significant technical performance challenges.
- Inconsistent Safety Factor Calculations: Legacy OMS APIs (such as GetATP) used by physical Point-of-Sale (POS) systems failed to factor in safety stock buffers, leading to overselling at the physical store level.
2. Monolithic Legacy Architecture & Global Scalability Roadblocks
- Tightly Coupled Infrastructure: VF’s legacy OMS setup was heavily tied to specific eCommerce front-ends and back-end ERP systems. Managing multiple disconnected OMS instances across various brands increased total cost of ownership (TCO) and operational overhead.
- Slow Onboarding Timelines: Launching a new brand or entering a new region required complex, custom code development that stretched timelines and delayed market entry.
- Lack of Global Standardization: VF required an enterprise-grade Order Management System to harmonize the buying, selling, and customer service lifecycle on a single, decoupled platform.
The Solution
- Perfaware designed and executed a multi-phased modernization strategy centered on IBM Sterling OMS, IBM Sterling Inventory Visibility (IV), and a modern integration layer.
Key Technical Implementations
Real-Time Inventory & Promising Optimization (SIP & IV)
- Real-Time Visibility via SIP Standard: Implemented IBM SIP Standard, allowing storefront PLPs and PDPs to pull real-time inventory metrics directly from IBM Sterling Inventory Visibility (IV), drastically cutting cancellation rates.
- Rapid Full-Sync Engine: Re-architected full sync pipelines to IV, dramatically reducing the time required to update daily inventory positions across all 4 DCs and 1,000+ retail stores.
- Style-to-Product Relationship Mapping: Built dynamic item relationships in IV during item creation and update cycles, allowing PDPs to execute efficient "Get Availability by Product" queries at scale.
- Node & Network Safety Factor Logic: Migrated POS queries to IV Network and Node APIs, ensuring safety stock rules and buffers were calculated dynamically before promising inventory to in-store buyers.
- Decoupled Enterprise Tech Stack: Deployed IBM Sterling OMS as the enterprise order management core within a unified technology stack alongside Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), MuleSoft, and SAP S/4 HANA.
- Reusable Global Playbook: Designed and deployed a reusable implementation template for VANS Canada successfully. This framework was built to onboard new brands or expand existing brands into new geographies with minimal development in 4 to 6 weeks. Subsequently other brands (NorthFace, Timberland and others) were rolled onto the Sterling OMS platform following the playbook
- End-to-End Flexible Fulfillment: Configured complete omnichannel capability suites within Sterling OMS, including:
- Click-and-Collect (BOPIS)
- Ship-from-Store (SFS)
- Endless Aisle / Save-the-Sale
- Procurement & Inter-Site Transfers
- In-Store Returns (BORIS)
- Unified Call Center and Customer Service Workflows
- MuleSoft Integration Layer: Replaced rigid point-to-point connections with MuleSoft, providing a decoupled, event-driven integration framework for improved scalability and faster system maintenance.
- Multi-region capabilities with feature toggles – All features were designed and developed using feature toggles controlled by configuration.This was supported by automated full regression testing every sprint to maintain high quality
Decoupled Enterprise Order Orchestration & Global Template
Results & Business Impact
By replacing legacy systems with a modern IBM Sterling OMS and Inventory Visibility architecture, Perfaware helped VF Corporation transform its global fulfillment operations:
- Lower Order Cancellation Rates: Real-time inventory feeds at the PLP/PDP level virtually eliminated out-of-stock promising errors and improved overall conversion rates.
- Accelerated Time-to-Market: The standardized global template reduced brand and geo onboarding cycles down to 4–6 weeks, enabling rapid global expansion without expensive re-platforming.
- Higher Store & DC Inventory Turnover: Real-time visibility across 1,000+ stores and 4 DCs enabled accurate Ship-from-Store, BOPIS, and Endless Aisle dispatches, turning retail locations into flexible fulfillment hubs.
- Multi-region Rollout with regional specific features: Designing with toggles for new feature enabled allowed the client to deploy code to production while keeping specific regional features dormant until their official release,
- Eliminated Overselling at POS: IV Network and Node APIs brought accurate safety factor calculations to physical stores, protecting store safety stock and ensuring accurate local order promising.
- Future-Proof Enterprise Scalability: The decoupled architecture (MuleSoft + Sterling OMS + SAP S/4 HANA) laid a robust foundation capable of processing high peak-season order volumes without performance degradation.
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