Inventory 2.0.0 - PromoStandards Education Series

Insights from the video:

🎯 The focus of the session is on inventory 2.0, aiming to provide a deep dive into its adoption and use cases, potentially offering valuable insights for members.

📊 According to the data, 98% of the requests in the last year have been against the 2.0 endpoint, indicating a high adoption rate.

🌟 The development of standards involves reaching out to the community, gathering feedback, and identifying areas that need improvement.

🤝 The development of inventory 2.0 involved the collaborative efforts of multiple individuals, emphasizing the importance of teamwork in implementing industry standards.

🔄 The concept of reusability is emphasized in the inventory system, with the introduction of reusable objects for future availability.

🧐 There is a significant disparity in the adoption of inventory management, with a few organizations excelling at it while others lag behind, indicating a need for better education on the benefits of inventory management.

📦 The inventory data available includes not only the quantity available, but also information on multiple colors, locations, and future availability times, providing granular details for making intelligent inventory decisions.

🌐 The new inventory system makes it easier to provide useful information to customers, rather than just giving them a blob of text.

Summary

TLDR: The key idea of the video is to promote the adoption of Inventory 2.0 as the recommended standard for suppliers, highlighting its features and benefits.

1. 00:00 📚 The promo standards education series focuses on promoting adoption of Inventory 2.0, which has resolved issues from previous versions and is recommended for suppliers to skip version 1.2 and adopt.

   1.1 The promo standards education series aims to educate members on the standards, starting with inventory 2.0, as part of their efforts to promote adoption and provide helpful guidance.

   1.2 The session discusses the importance of feedback and the plan to create a recorded library of technical and business cases, with a focus on inventory 2.0.

   1.3 There are three versions of inventory, with 1.0 being deprecated and 1.2 still in use, but the focus is on promoting adoption of the most current version, 2.0.

   1.4 There are 110 suppliers with an inventory 1.2 endpoint, but the focus is on inventory 2.0 adoption, with 98% of requests in the last year being against the 2.0 endpoint, while a small percentage still use 1.0 and the majority use 1.2.

   1.5 Move from version 1.0 to version 2.0 as it is superior and has resolved issues, particularly with the inclusion of inventory, and it is recommended for suppliers to skip version 1.2 and adopt version 2.

   1.6 Suppliers faced issues with aggregated inventory, inconsistent error handling, and lack of communication for future inventory commitments in the previous version, prompting the need for corrections in Inventory 2.0.0.

2. 10:43 📝 The speaker discusses the process of gathering feedback to create version 2.0 of the standards, with a new standard for order status 2.0 being presented for approval and updates being provided through Slack, while certain features were not included in the inventory system due to complexity and potential for large payloads.

   2.1 The speaker discusses the process of gathering feedback from the community to identify and address major change requests for version 2.0 of the standards.

   2.2 A request for a new standard was initiated by the community, which provided guidelines for the standards committee to create a second version, going through multiple release candidates for vetting.

   2.3 Sometimes mistakes happen in the documentation process, but the standards committee and board ultimately determine which standards get published.

   2.4 The next standard to be presented for approval is order status 2.0, and members will have early access to development updates through Slack.

   2.5 The speaker discusses the reasons for not including certain features in the inventory system, such as querying by an array of product ids, filtering by inventory location, including fob details, and localization, due to complexity and potential for large payloads.

3. 15:39 📝 The speaker discusses the inventory 2.0 standard, including methods for retrieving inventory levels and filter values, the importance of implementing these standards for suppliers, and the introduction of reusable objects for future availability and address/contact information.

   3.1 The speaker discusses the progression and details of the inventory 2.0 standard, with Raj, Paul, Eric, and himself being involved, and mentions that Paul will go through requests and responses in different scenarios.

   3.2 There are two methods in the inventory 2.0 service: "get inventory levels" returns all inventory, and "get filter values" allows you to get a list of parts, colors, and sizes, which should be implemented by all suppliers to avoid issues for distributors.

   3.3 Inventory consists of parts with locations and quantities, and the speaker discusses the introduction of reusable objects for future availability and the reusability of address and contact information in purchase order, invoice, and new order status standards.

   3.4 The basic structure involves something with children stored in multiple locations, with the option of future arrivals, quantities, timing, and specific destinations.

4. 19:29 📦 Most distributors and consumers are using an on-demand approach for inventory, with a focus on real-time pulls and intelligent data consumption, while ensuring accurate inventory numbers to avoid issues with distributors.

   4.1 Inventory is underutilized in the industry, but there are a handful of people who are doing it exceptionally well while others are not, and this is consistent with the number of accounts and requests coming through.

   4.2 Most distributors and consumers are not doing daily mass pulls of inventory, but instead are using an on-demand approach, which suppliers should support.

   4.3 Inventory is typically pulled in real-time rather than stored or cached, with some businesses combining daily and on-demand checks for search results and purchase orders.

   4.4 In the future, there should be intelligent consumption of data with a focus on the volatility of products, allowing consumers to determine which products should be refreshed more frequently, and suppliers should cache stale data if their inventory doesn't change often.

   4.5 Ensure that your services actually work and that your internal and external inventory numbers match to avoid problems with distributors.

5. 24:51 📊 The video discusses the importance of inventory data, including product details and quantities, and provides examples of querying product availability using schema and direct input on a website.

   5.1 The transcript discusses the available data in inventory, including product details, quantities, and future availability, using examples from a website called Promo Zone.

   5.2 The speaker discusses the importance of schema and provides examples of requests and responses for querying product availability.

   5.3 The total inventory quantity is shown across all locations, with a specific location having a quantity of 15068, and there is also a future availability of 5000 units coming in on October 5th.

   5.4 In version 1.2.1, information was placed in the extra info area, but now it is easier to provide useful information to customers by directly inputting it into the website, such as with the example of an unlimited amount of manufactured items.

6. 29:38 📝 Suppliers can use the "buy to order" feature to show future availability and delivery times, but it's important to set future availability dates and quantities to account for transit time and avoid assuming immediate availability.

   6.1 Soap UI is a useful tool for connecting to services and seeing real-time data responses by simply inputting the URL and filling in the necessary information.

   6.2 The speaker emphasizes the importance of accurately inputting the date of the last inventory change to determine the frequency of item changes and advises against using the query date.

   6.3 Suppliers can use the "buy to order" feature to quickly obtain inventory that they don't necessarily keep on hand, allowing them to show future availability and delivery times.

   6.4 Inventory can be unlimited in theory, but in practice, it is important to set future availability dates and quantities for buy to order products to account for transit time and avoid assuming immediate availability.

   6.5 The speaker addresses questions and plans to create an education channel in Slack, allowing participants to ask questions and engage in discussion.

7. 35:52 📝 The inventory 2.0.0 update added a filter array for requesting multiple parts but not multiple products, and suggested a buy-to-order approach for imported products; future availability can be conveyed through replenishment lead time, and the system can handle multiple future availability dates and shipments; suppliers will likely return postal codes instead of zip codes for shipping and tax purposes.

   7.1 The spec for requesting multiple parts and products at once did not make it into the inventory 2.0.0, but a filter array was added to allow requesting multiple parts but not multiple products.

   7.2 For imported products, it is suggested to use a buy-to-order approach and keep zero inventory until the import date is known.

   7.3 The speaker discusses the concept of future availability and how it can be conveyed through the field of replenishment lead time, clarifying that if the replenishment amount is unlimited, a lead time of 15 days can be used, and addressing a question about suppliers sending multiple future availability options.

   7.4 During the hand sanitizer shortage, the system failed to handle multiple future availability dates and shipments, but it is possible to have individual parts with multiple future available inventories and quantity information.

   7.5 The speaker discusses the difference between zip codes and postal codes in relation to shipping and tax, noting that suppliers will likely return postal codes as their identification.

   7.6 Please fill out the survey to provide feedback on this trial run of the session, as we want to know what works and what topics you would like to see in the future.

8. 43:06 👍 Looking forward to your feedback on future topics.