The Supply Chain and Inventory Planning Blog

After conducting almost 200 customer interviews, we’ve gained some insight into what separates the great from the good when it comes to inventory.

We started by asking our advisor, Oseyi Ikuenobe, the Senior Product Manager of @WalmartLabs’ Smart Forecasting product for his thoughts. At @WalmartLabs, Oseyi and a team of data scientists and engineers plans the inventory for Walmart’s $13 bn e-commerce business. 

Inventory management should have ROI benchmarks

According to Oseyi, "The best inventory strategy is one that allows you to buy the 'right amounts of the right inventory' to maximize revenue, profitability and growth. Instead of trying to simply control costs, it is better to think of inventory decisions the way we think of marketing spend - in terms of ROI. Once you have that mindset, you quickly realize that the ultimate smart inventory solution is one that can synthesize the collective wisdom of the organization and deploy it to drive decision making."

We’ve gleaned two insights from Oseyi’s thoughts:

1. Best-in-class retailers think about inventory as an investment, not a cost center
2. Collaboration between key functional areas is key to successful inventory planning

Reframing inventory as an investment

We work mostly with start-ups and all too often we see them allocating a fixed budget to inventory. But, inventory is an investment, much like marketing. The investment that a company makes in its inventory supports the company’s sales target. We’d propose that companies go through a series of questions to set their inventory budget:

1. What is our marketing budget?
2. Based on our marketing spend and our organic reach, what is our revenue target?
3. How much product do we need to sell to support our revenue target?

This third question is the start of the planning process. Once the revenue target is established, a planner can go through and make a determination regarding the product mix and volume of product needed. 

Collaboration improves inventory planning

The process described above only works if there is tight collaboration between all of the functional areas that impact sales like finance, marketing, merchandising and operations. 

Unfortunately, we have seen a lot of avoidable crises caused because one functional area forgot to tell operations about planned changes. Things like changing the discount amount on a promo or A/B tests planned on the site. While these lapses might seem small, they can have a big impact if there isn’t enough product in stock to support these initiatives.

So What?

We want to encourage our customers to reframe the way you think about inventory: it’s not your biggest cost center, it’s your biggest investment. At Fuse, we’re designing a tool to help automate the grunt work of planning so that you can focus on important, strategic decisions. 

We’re here to help you focus on your business, not your inventory.

At Fuse, we have the privilege of helping our customers enjoy their work more by providing an easy to use, beautifully designed inventory planning tool. As we’ve gotten to know our customers, we’ve been deeply impressed by how thoughtful, sharp and hard-working you are.

We’ve compiled data from over 150 customer interviews to send you one message: you’re not alone. In every single interview, our customers inevitably ask, “Are we the only ones using Excel and Google sheets?” 

The answer is no, you are absolutely not. You’re not alone. That’s exactly why we at Fuse decided to tackle the challenge of inventory planning and management head-on.

90% of customers manage inventory in Excel

Almost 90% of our customers manage their inventory in a combination of Excel and Google Sheets, while just under 10% have moved on to build a custom system -- a costly and lengthy process. Typically, companies start thinking about a custom system at the 100 SKU mark when they’ve pushed their existing Excel models to a breaking point. Excel is crashing on a daily basis and procurement is nearly impossible to track in Google Sheets. 

We asked Karan, Director of Ops at Boxed, a company bringing bulk wholesale shopping to mobile, why they built a custom system: “At Boxed, we needed backend inventory forecasting systems that were customized for our business model and flexible. We searched for a solution on the market and didn’t find anything that met our needs. This is why we chose to design something in-house.”

Custom inventory management systems have drawbacks

Of the companies we spoke to that have built a custom system, the top three reasons for building something in-house were not being able to find a system that meets their needs, not being able to afford existing systems and not wanting to spend a long time implementing an external solution.

Unfortunately, custom systems come with their own challenges. Most require at least one full-time engineer to maintain them, taking away valuable engineering talent from important product initiatives that could grow the business. This is exactly why most companies don’t devote a full-time engineer to maintaining their system. Inevitably, it fails to keep up with the growing organization’s needs and ultimately needs to be overhauled. 

Building a custom system is expensive. The companies we’ve spoken to have spent anywhere from $200,000 to over $1,000,000 just to build it, excluding the cost of ongoing maintenance. 

Fuse's mission is to change the frustrating status quo. Our favorite part of our job is talking to customers and improving your quality of life. Working at a fast-growing company is exciting and fun. We want to help you spend more time focusing on your business, not your inventory.

Supply chain is incredibly daunting, especially if you’re new to it. While it might seem confusing and complicated at first, you can tackle this complex field by breaking it down into a series of simple steps. 

1.       Choose Your Inventory Assortment

This is where your genius as a founder comes in. You know your customers best and you can use your judgement and qualitative insights to hone in on that next best thing. Of course, if there’s any data you can use to supplement your intuition (like what’s sold well in the past), we encourage you to do so!

We always recommend that young companies start with a simple assortment of SKUs. You can always add more as you grow, but it’s incredibly hard to manage a wide product assortment right out of the gate.

2.       Forecast Demand

This step is critical because you need to have an understanding of what sales of each product (down to the size and color level) will be. Without this analysis, you could wind up vastly over or under buying inventory. When you’re just starting out, it’s completely OK to use an Excel model. Hopefully, you’ve taken our advice and kept your product assortment simple, which will make it easier for you to forecast demand.

However, as you scale, there aren’t really any sophisticated tools out there to help you that don’t cost a small fortune. That’s why we created Fuse - to help algorithmically forecast demand at a price point that doesn’t break the bank.

3.       Size Your Inventory Buys

Once you’ve completed your demand forecast, you need to translate this data into an inventory buy and replenishment plan to make sure that you have enough inventory to fulfill expected demand. As a young company, you can’t afford to stock out - it disappoints customers and damages your brand.

To avoid stockouts, you want to link your demand forecast to the inventory you have on hand and the inventory you expect to receive from suppliers in the coming months. You need to order enough to make up for the gap between what you have on hand, what you expect to receive and how much you plan to sell. You’ll also need a bit of buffer just in case.

Many companies do this work in Excel, but Fuse can automate the whole process of translating your forecast to an order recommendation that’s consistent with your buying cycle.

4.       Track Your Purchase Orders

Now that you’ve placed your orders with your suppliers, you’ll need some sort of tracking system to track these POs. If there are delays or something arrives to the factory damaged, you’ll want to make sure to stay on top of it or else you may stock out.

Many companies use Google Sheets, but with Fuse’s PO module, Fuse has a simple way for you to seamlessly track your purchase orders. Unlike a google sheet, once the PO change is logged, we can seamlessly link it back to your current inventory position and demand forecast in order to give you a clear picture of what this means for your business.

5.       Track Your Inventory

Now you know that your inventory is somewhere between your supplier and your warehouse, but the question is, where? Is it on the boat, is it at the dock, is it in the warehouse? Flexport can help you track where your goods are. This type of tracking is critical because there may be delays at customs or in other parts of that shipping process that neither you nor your vendor can anticipate. Having visibility can help you make adjustments and communicate with your customers.

6.       Understand Your Inventory Position

Your inventory has arrived. Now, it’s critical to understand exactly how much of it you have and where it is. There are two possibilities - you can do it yourself at your own warehouse or you can work with a third party logistics provider (3PL). Most young companies choose to work with a 3PL rather than managing their own warehouse. With a 3PL provider like Quiet Logistics, you can completely outsource both the tracking and fulfillment piece of inventory management. While this might seem expensive, unless your core competency as a business or a founder is warehouse management, you may be better off outsourcing.

If you do choose to run and manage your own warehouse, you’ll need a warehouse management system like Fishbowl to help your employees in the warehouse know what’s where and also track goods as they come in. 

7.       Fulfill Your Orders

Finally, your products are in your warehouse and you’re ready to get products into the hands of customers. This is one of the most critical questions in the supply chain. There are two parts to this process - order management part and shipping and logistics.

On the order management side, there are many great systems out there like Stitch Labs that can help you make sure you’ve allocated the right amount of inventory to your e-commerce site, your retail store and your wholesale business. When you process an order from a customer on your website, you want to make sure that you have enough inventory to fulfill that order. You might have a lot of inventory on hand, but perhaps all of it is already allocated to your wholesale channel. These systems can also notify you when you’re running low. As your company grows, you may want to expand into more robust ERP systems like NetSuite. These types of systems are typically what people think of when they refer to an “inventory management system.”

Finally, the shipping and logistics piece is a whole separate beast. Smaller companies aren’t well resourced to do this, which is why a 3PL system can be extremely useful. Not only can they take care of your inbound goods, but they can also pack and ship goods to your customers. There are also new software providers like Shiphawk that can help you and your customers track where the shipment is. This piece is critically important because it’s how your customers will interact with you and your brand, so you want the experience - from packaging, to shipping, to tracking, to delivery - to be flawless. 

Staying sane

As a growing company, to stay sane, you need to take it one step at a time. There are some basic things you can do when you’re starting out to make life easier and help you succeed. First, find a 3PL provider you trust and rely on them to do the blocking and tackling. Second, while going into wholesale can seem attractive, you need to be careful about doing this early on. Working with retailers that are 1000x your size can be extremely challenging and time consuming, so you want to make sure to pick the right partner. Lastly, be thoughtful about how much inventory you buy and how you finance it. Making big mistakes early on can literally take down your company. 

We created Fuse to help companies transition from managing their demand forecasting and inventory planning process in Excel and Google Sheets to using sophisticated software. Start with Excel, but don’t stay there too long. As your business becomes more complex, mistakes become even more risky and costly. Make sure to invest in inventory planning software like Fuse to avoid drastically over or understocking. We’re here to help you focus on your business, not your inventory.