It is time to break down how you can build one for your Shopify store. Let's understand it from the perspective of Shopify development partners.
Kick Off With A Clean Data Foundation –
AI will be only as smart as your data. Therefore, you should manage your product catalog creatively and smartly. According to Shopify application development experts, each catalog must have: lowing things including –
- A unique SKU
- Consistent naming conventions
- Category-oriented tags
- Vendor-related details
- The cost and price-oriented information
- Historically sales-oriented tracking
- Seasonal demand-based data
- Supplier lead times and returns
You may be thinking that feeding all this into a single source of truth is possible. Yes, it is. A centralized database can make it possible. You must go with a cloud-based service such as Firebase or AWS DynamoDB.
Integrate Shopify Following AI Tools –
The next thing you need to do is connect your Shopify store to tools. These tools should allow machine-learning models to access and analyze your inventory. This is where a Shopify API developer becomes vital. They help you extract:
- What about the Current Stock levels
- Data about Daily sales
- The order frequency
- Customer-related trends
Now, it is time to sync these with platforms, including
- TensorFlow
- PyTorch
- Or even no-code tools such as Akkio/DataRobot
There is no need to code from scratch. Many AI tools introduce pre-trained models for time series forecasting.
Add Smart Demand Forecasting –
Yes, it is indeed the core of AI-powered inventory. Post-order patterns help to train your AI models. Let your AI model learn the spies during Diwali, Christmas, BFCM, or even your influencer campaigns.
Are you wondering about the good models' use? Here, we mention –
- ARIMA is ideal for classic forecasting
- LSTM is ideal for deep learning sequence prediction
- Facebook Prophet is suitable for seasonality-heavy data
Forecasts must not revolve around just “what”. They should also be beneficial what time would be ideal to reorder. It should also consider how much time it would take. And what supplier would be ideal to connect with for ordering things?
Automate Reordering Following AI Rules –
What is the next step? You need to go ahead to set up auto-reordering logic based on predictive triggers.
Here, we give you an insight into these examples. It will give a better understanding.
- If AI predicts a stock out in 7 days, it is time to place an order now
- If demand is going up by 10% week-on-week, then increase the buffer by 20%
- Pay attention to quick-selling SKUs for faster restock
You may use the following platforms, including
- Zapier
- Shopify Flo
- Or build custom workflows using Node.js or Python, following Shopify webhooks.
What you can do more is link this with supplier APIs to send real-time PO requests.
What About Real-Time Alerts?
There is no smart system without visibility. There are many smart tools to build dashboards. It is
- Google Data Studio,
- Looker
- or Power BI
It is time to plug them into your inventory data and forecast outputs. Moreover, it is time to configure alerts via Slack or email –
- “X SKU will go out of stock in three days.” ..
- “Sales exceed forecast by 25%”
- “Delay from the supplier’s site detection for Y product”
It is time to make data actionable, not just visual.
Go With AI For Price-Stock Optimization
Inventory does not mean just about quantity. It revolves around the strategy, too. AI has emerged as an ideal tool. It tells you when to raise or drop the price following the inventory status. If you are overstocked, it is time to introduce limited-time discounts. If you go low on stock, then raise the price slightly. It will lead to a slowdown in orders and allow you to have a good margin.
There are tools to go with the logic in real-time, such as
- Prisync
- Wiser
- RepricerExpres
Conclusion –
AI inventory systems are worthy and valuable. It is not science fiction at all. It can be said that they are your next competitive edge following Shopify. They help to save hours and mitigate stockouts. They also increase profit margins. Following the ideal tools and integrations, even small teams can automate like big players. Therefore, it is time to kick small.