Marrying the informational and physical aspects of the supply chain translates into consumers who are able to buy a product in a store and have it delivered, buy any quantity they desire, and buy online with the option or picking up and returning to the store, all seamlessly, says Peters. "I think the retailers who get this right will be the real winners in terms of brand loyalty," he says.

Consumers are driving these changes and suppliers and retailers are busy catching up, Peters says. "Traditionally the retailers have had different models for taking and fulfilling orders and now they are seeing the need to merge the physical and operational aspects of those two models to deliver what consumers are demanding -- products anywhere, anytime at the best cost."

The first wave of this trend was the desire for solutions that would aggregate and provide the data, Peters said. In the second wave, "companies wanted us to analyze the data and tell them what it meant. In the third way, they want an answer to the question of what to do with the data," he says. "We currently are at the intersection of second and third waves. I have the data and I know what it means, but now what do I do? How to I operate differently in the future with a focus on agility and best landed cost?"

To help its customers answer this question, GENCO developed a solution called Product Lifecycle Logistics, a holistic approach that treats the movement of products as one continuous inventory stream.

"We thought about the problems that retail customers have in delivering on that promise of "˜anytime, anywhere at the lowest cost' and we put together solutions that aggregate data to enable a more agile supply chain," says Peters. "It is an approach that helps companies make faster, smarter decisions and speed up the movement of products."

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Keywords: supply chain, supply chain management, inventory management, 3pl, transportation management, third party logistics, logistics management, warehouse management, logistics & supply chain, logistics services, supply chain solutions, supply chain planning, supply chain services, retail supply chain