Automated Inventory and Price Monitoring System for E-Commerce Platforms

The client faces significant difficulties in maintaining up-to-date pricing and stock information for over 100,000 products across more than 1,500 stores and online marketplaces. Manual tracking leads to operational errors, delayed updates, and inefficiencies that affect customer experience and competitiveness. There is also a need to monitor competing vendors’ prices and stock levels in real-time to stay ahead in the marketplace.

A large eCommerce retailer managing a vast catalog of over 100,000 products across multiple stores and online channels, seeking to automate market monitoring, price adjustments, and stock management.

• Reduce manual effort by automating daily monitoring of over 100,000 products across the network.
• Ensure high data accuracy and real-time updates of stock levels and pricing information.
• Improve operational efficiency by minimizing errors and manual interventions.
• Implement a scalable system capable of processing up to 60 million page requests daily.
• Enable real-time notifications and alerting mechanisms for order issues, stockouts, and price fluctuations.
• Create detailed reporting dashboards for insight into product performance, price variations, and stock availability.
• Maintain infrastructure costs below specified limits while ensuring high system performance.

• Custom scripts and distributed server architecture to crawl and scan over 60 million web pages daily.
• Web interface for system control, configuration, and manual override.
• Real-time data collection of product prices, stock status, and variations.
• Cross-checking tools to compare listings and pricing across multiple online marketplaces (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s).
• Price arbitrage algorithms to identify and capitalize on pricing gaps.
• Notification system for order anomalies, delays, stockouts, and significant price changes.
• Automated update processes for new product listings and price adjustments.
• Database architecture for storing raw and processed data, supporting large-scale analytics.
• Reporting dashboards providing detailed statistical insights and trend analysis.

• Online marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, etc.) for product and price data.
• Order management and shipment tracking systems to monitor order statuses.
• Marketplaces’ APIs for real-time data synchronization.
• Notification and alerting services for automated admin notifications.

• System must process up to 60 million page requests per day with minimal latency.
• Infrastructure costs should not exceed $1,000 per month.
• High system reliability and uptime, with automated error detection and recovery.
• Scalability to accommodate increased product catalog and data volume.
• Data security measures to protect sensitive operational data.
• Compliance with relevant data and privacy standards.

The implementation of this automated monitoring system aims to significantly reduce manual work, potentially discharging over 6 employees’ workload, saving approximately 1,000 hours of manual effort monthly. It will improve data accuracy, enable real-time updates, and enhance competitive positioning. The system is projected to generate an increase in monthly profits by approximately $50,700, through optimized pricing strategies and minimized stockouts, leading to improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.