Amazon Prime Big Deal Days will put another concentrated burst of demand through retailers’ operations, at a point when many are already preparing for the wider peak season.

For brands selling through Amazon alongside their own ecommerce channels and stores, fulfilment quickly becomes a question of how best to use inventory across the whole network. Having stock available is only part of the picture. Retailers also need to understand where that stock is, what capacity they have in different locations and which fulfilment option makes most sense for each order.

That matters when volumes rise quickly. Routing too many orders through one location, or allocating inventory without considering demand elsewhere, can add cost and leave stock in the wrong places for the channels that need it next.

AI has a useful role here because these decisions involve a growing number of variables. Bringing together inventory position, fulfilment capacity, delivery requirements and cost can help retailers make better routing decisions as demand changes, rather than managing each sales channel separately.

Prime Big Deal Days is a good example of why retailers increasingly need to think about fulfilment across the business, rather than channel by channel. The opportunity is not simply to capture the additional demand, but to fulfil it efficiently without compromising inventory availability or the customer experience elsewhere.