Estimated Delivery Dates

IBM® Sterling Intelligent Promising offers accurate estimation of delivery dates at an early stage of the shopper's journey. Accurate estimation of the delivery date is important for the shoppers because it tells them when they receive their orders. Both on-hand and future availability of items is used to provide these Estimated Delivery Dates (EDDs).

Sterling Intelligent Promising offers accurate estimation of delivery or pickup dates with the help of the Get EDD API. Sterling Intelligent Promising can estimate the earliest delivery date or pickup dates even before the orders are placed, which means that the shoppers get a projected delivery date estimation just when the shoppers look for the product. They also get to know that how soon their orders can be delivered or picked up from a nearby node. This information helps your shoppers make the purchase decisions right when the shoppers look for the product.

On-hand availability

For on-hand availability, Sterling Intelligent Promising estimates the earliest delivery date based on the SHIP or PICK delivery methods. Shoppers can select either of these delivery methods. Then, based on the preference of delivery method, the Get EDD API considers different parameters for promising calculations.

Estimating the delivery date for the SHIP delivery method

If a shopper selects the SHIP delivery method, then Sterling Intelligent Promising estimates the earliest delivery date for a single quantity item. In this case, the promising calculations depend on various parameters, including the following parameters:

Inventory distribution across nodes: Refers to how inventory is spread across different fulfillment locations or nodes, such as distribution centers or stores. A well-distributed inventory ensures faster and more efficient delivery by sourcing items from the nearest or most optimal node. For more information, see Node fulfillment options.
Inventory availability at specific nodes: Indicates whether a particular item is currently in stock at a given node. This availability directly affects whether an item can be shipped or picked up immediately or if it requires sourcing from another location or from future inventory. For more information, see Inventory availability.
Available inventory capacity: Represents the ability of a node to fulfill orders based on inventory capacity that is available, limited capacity can delay fulfillment. For more information, see Capacity-based availability.
Shipping groups: Define how items are grouped for delivery based on factors such as destination, delivery method, or carrier. Grouping items efficiently helps to optimize shipping costs and timelines. For more information, see Shipping groups.
Transit details: Includes information about the time and route taken by carriers to deliver items from a fulfillment node to the customer location. Transit details are crucial for calculating accurate delivery timelines. For more information, see Carriers and carrier services.
Calendar constraints: Refers to carrier service calendar constraints that specify holidays, cut-off times, and working hours to define when orders can't be processed, shipped, or delivered by a carrier service. These carrier service calendar constraints ensure delivery estimates are realistic and aligned with carrier operational schedules. For more information, see Calendar constraints.

After multiple factors are considered, the Get EDD API completes multiple permutations of promising calculations. Because of the promising calculations, the shopper gets the earliest EDD of their orders.

The shoppers can see the EDD for each product on the Order Hub. For example, on the Product listings page, Sterling Intelligent Promising provides EDD for each product. Shoppers see the following delivery details:

Order by 10.30PM for delivery as soon as:

Friday, September 27 by 2:30 AM (Express)
Saturday, September 28 by 2:30 AM (Standard)

In this case, Express and Standard are the delivery speed options. By using the EDD, Sterling Intelligent Promising helps the shoppers to understand how soon you can get your order delivered based on your preferred delivery speed.

Estimating the pickup date for the PICK delivery method: If the item is available at a node that is located within a certain radius of the shopper's location, then Sterling Intelligent Promising offers a PICK delivery method. If a shopper decides to pick up a product from the nearby node, they can select PICK as the preferred delivery method. In this case, the Get EDD API considers the inventory distribution across nodes and available inventory capacity in the promising calculations and provides the earliest date that the shopper can pick up the product from the node.

The shoppers can choose to pick up the product from the nearby stores. In that case, you can see by when the product is available for pick up from the nearby store.

For example, on the Product listing page, Sterling Intelligent Promising provides pick up details. Shoppers can see the following details:

Ready for pickup:

8:30 PM at 815 STONEWOOD CENTER (8 miles)
8:30 PM at 848 CENTURY CITY (11 miles)

Future availability

When on-hand inventory is not available, you can use future availability to source inventory for the pre-launch of a product or for items that are pre-ordered in advance. By looking at future availability, you might source this inventory from purchase orders or inventory that is in transit. This is relevant for pre-launch product scenarios or pre-order scenarios where you need to assess the future availability of inventory.

Estimating a pickup date for a product pre-launch or a pre-order: For example, as a fulfillment manager you want to launch a new product in three weeks time and you want to order inventory in advance. In this scenario, the EDD is evaluated according to the estimated arrival date and any delivery constraints that can occur.; Similarly, a customer might want to pre-order flowers before Valentines day. They are interested in knowing when the stock arrives to plan for this event.; In both scenarios, future availability allows the planning of inventory availability for a later date.

For future availability, Sterling Intelligent Promising offers accurate estimation of delivery or pickup dates by using the Get EDD API and the Get Optimized Checkout Plan (Pre-Purchase) APIs.

Expanded availability and fulfillment precision with unplanned inventory and unsegmented consumption

With the introduction of unsegmented consumption rules and unplanned inventory in Sterling Intelligent Promising, the overall availability pool is expanded, giving vendors greater selling power and flexibility.

To support more accurate and flexible fulfillment decisions, the Promising service now enhances the EDD and checkout assignment calculations by incorporating unplanned inventory and unsegmented consumption rules. These features uplift the SKU availability and enable fulfillment managers to provide precise delivery and sourcing estimates that are aligned with elevated inventory levels.

Inventory groups now considered

Sterling Intelligent Promising now evaluates inventory across three distinct groups:

Physical inventory: Traditional on-hand and future inventory.; Can be segmented or unsegmented, based on the sales channel.
Borrowed inventory: Unsegmented inventory that is used in segmented lookups.; Enabled by unsegmented consumption rules.
Logical inventory: Represents uplifted inventory that is not realized yet.; Supports sales acceleration and demand shaping.

API enhancements

The following APIs now consider all three inventory groups:

Inventory evaluation logic

The Promising service does not restrict evaluation by start or end dates within each group. Instead, it prioritizes earliest available inventory across all sources.

Example permutations

AvailableSupplies → Unsegmented → Unplanned: Use AvailableSupplies first; if unavailable, fallback to Unsegmented, then Unplanned.
Unsegmented → Unplanned → FutureAvailableSupplies: If Unsegmented has immediate inventory, use it; otherwise, fallback to Unplanned or FutureAvailableSupplies.
Unplanned → Unsegmented → FutureAvailableSupplies: If Unplanned inventory provides immediate availability, use it first, then proceed to the next groups as needed.

You can view the inventory evaluation examples. For more information, see Scenario: Availability and fulfillment with unplanned inventory and unsegmented consumption.

Using the EDD cache for bulk retrieval in PLP lists

In modern eCommerce, the Product List Page (PLP) is a critical touchpoint where shoppers browse and compare items. To enhance the customer experience and drive conversions, retailers are increasingly surfacing the EDD directly on the PLP. This helps shoppers to make informed decisions based on how quickly they can receive their items.

Sterling Intelligent Promising provides an EDD cache for fast, bulk-lookup of previously computed EDD data. When this feature is enabled, the following caching process is used:

The Get EDD API computes the pick up and delivery dates for customers by using live data and stores it in a cache.
The PLP uses the getCachedEDDs API to retrieve the previously computed, stored, EDD results for multiple items.
If cache results don't exist, the getCachedEDDs API returns a cache miss.
Sterling Intelligent Promising notes the missing data and computes and populates the cache for this input by using an automatic asynchronous process. All subsequent calls to the getCachedEDDs API for the same input, return this asynchronously computed and cached value.

PLPs often display many items simultaneously, and calculating delivery dates for each item in real time can be costly. The getCachedEDDs API helps to optimize this process by providing several key advantages:

Reuse of previously computed EDDs to avoid redundant calculations.
Lower latency by providing results from cache.
Higher throughput and improved scalability under heavy load.
Single-call retrieval of EDDs for multiple items to streamline requests.

However, cached results come with some limitations, they are best-effort only. For example, the result might not reflect the latest inventory picture, capacity, rules, or recent configuration changes until the Get EDD API is called to trigger a fresh computation or until the cached result expires, which happens at the end of the order-by time.

Note: In the Get EDD API, for the SHIP delivery method input, unless destination rules are used, it is important not to pass the city or state values for the destination. Passing these values leads to sub optimal use of the cache. This is a known limitation that will be addressed in a future enhancement.

As a system integrator, you can configure caching to calculate EDD responses for customers. For more information, see Configuring caching for Estimated Delivery Dates and Configuring caching for Estimated Delivery Dates by using APIs.