P-052824: How Harper Collins Automated Inventory Reservations

This session was presented at INFOCUS 2026.

How do you guarantee inventory for strategic customers without creating manual processes or sacrificing overall inventory efficiency? Harper Collins faced this challenge by offering customers reserved inventory that could be drawn down over a defined period, while ensuring those reserved quantities remained unavailable to other customers until the reservation expired. This session explores how Harper Collins leveraged JD Edwards Fulfillment, combined with Orchestrator, to automate the entire reservation lifecycle. Attendees will learn how customer and item-specific reservation profiles with effective dates were implemented, how inventory was isolated from general availability, and how order fulfillment was seamlessly automated from reserved inventory. We’ll also demonstrate the automated process that identifies expired reservations, returns unused inventory to the general pool, and maximizes inventory utilization without manual intervention. Whether you’re looking to improve customer service, better manage constrained inventory, or automate complex fulfillment processes, this session provides a practical, real-world example of extending JD Edwards to solve a common business challenge.

This session is eligible for the following CPE certification: NASBA

Speakers: Michael Tigue, HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS
Mahesh Sathenjeri, Syntax