B2B Upgrade: Stock Pools

Over the last several months, our tech team has been working hard to develop an exciting new update to ControlPort™. We’re pleased to announce Stock Pools, a new feature enabling smarter and more efficient inventory management for multichannel eCom brands. 

Stock Pools at a glance:

• Create and manage separate pools of stock
• Reserve stock for specific channels or purposes
• Manage through ControlPort™ with our new UI
• Contact Client Services to activate
• Future updates planned

What Are Stock Pools?

Stock Pools is a new feature that allows our clients to create and manage separate pools of stock within our fulfilment centres, quickly and simply through ControlPort™. It’s all done in the cloud, and doesn’t require any physical process. You’ll be able to use these separate pools to serve unique channels or purposes.

As it stands now, our clients have a single ‘pool’ of stock from which all orders are fulfilled. This can make it difficult to reserve stock for specific purposes. For example, you may wish to reserve units for B2B orders, or for a campaign drop that’s happening in a few weeks time. In an ideal situation, orders made today wouldn’t consume stock from those units you have reserved.

That’s the problem we’ve designed Stock Pools to solve. With Stock Pools enabled on your account, you’ll be able to create dedicated pools for a variety of purposes, such as those aforementioned B2B orders or campaign drops. That means when an order is placed via your website, it will never consume stock from a pool you’ve allocated for B2B or an imminent campaign drop. 

Stock Pools isn’t just about allocating stock for B2B or future campaigns, though. We’ve designed the feature to be used in any way you see fit. For example, you may wish to create a unique stock pool for each of the channels you’re using. You may choose to create a pool of dormant stock while you develop an effective marketing campaign. It’s really up to you!

The new Stock Pools UI

In addition to implementing the backend functionality to support this new update, we’ve also created a brand new user interface to make it easy for you to create and manage stock pools through ControlPort™. 

Once Stock Pools is enabled on your account, you’ll see a brand new area for it on the navigation bar at the left of the dashboard. From here, you can browse existing stock pools, create new ones, and manage transfers from one stock pool to another. All of it can be done in just a few clicks. 

If you have any trouble using the new interface, don’t hesitate to reach out to the Client Services Team. They’ll be more than happy to guide you through and answer any questions.

How to activate Stock Pools 

To start using Stock Pools, please contact the Client Services Team who will be able to schedule activation for your account. 

While we’re excited for our clients to start using this feature, please be aware that we’ll be gradually rolling it out to interested clients.

This is simply to ensure that the rollout is as smooth as possible for everyone. In the case of a delay, we’ll provide you with an estimated activation date.

We’re really excited about what this update means for stock management at J&J, particularly for brands that ship orders both B2B and B2C. We’ve got plenty of ideas for future updates, which, as always, will be shaped by client feedback.

If you’re not yet a client of J&J Global Fulfilment, please feel free to give us a call on +44 (0)333 200 9950 to learn more about Stock Pools!

Thanks for your continued support, and we can’t wait for you to start using Stock Pools!

About the Author

J&J Global Fulfilment

It all began in 2010, when James Hyde and James Strachan couldn’t find a modern shipping service for the eCommerce business they ran. Faced with messy warehouses based on out-dated systems, they decided to build their own. We’ve not stood still since, helping hundreds of online brands scale up – and scaling with them.

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