Written by: Michael Steckner. Edited by: Gail Haggerty
Netstock empowers businesses to make informed inventory decisions, but a consistent approach is vital to harness its full potential. By incorporating these five key areas into your daily, weekly, and monthly routines, you can achieve optimal inventory management and drive your business to new levels of efficiency!
Mastering Forecasts
Accurate forecasts are the backbone of effective inventory management. Netstock provides the tools to help you stay on top of this critical area. Begin by reviewing exceptions and making necessary changes to the forecasts.
Exception Reviews:
Monthly: Focus on significant discrepancies where sales have exceeded the forecast or where forecasts have exceeded sales for the period. Our exception reports can be checked over 1, 3, 6, or 12-month periods. Sort by value, units, or percentage, and choose an appropriate cut-off to focus on the highest variances.
Weekly: Perform weekly reviews using the month-to-date exception reports, to help identify unexpected sales that may lead to a stock-out position
Daily: Check for any items where forecasts do not align with subjective expectations.
Adjusting Forecasts:
Combine algorithmic data with valuable market knowledge, including insights on promotions, customer changes, supplier issues, or broader market trends.
Use a combination of high-level macro adjustments (location or group) and fine-tuning of individual items as necessary.
Freeze macro-level forecasts with caution. Always consider the potential impact on future order recommendations.
Adjust forecast trends for the full planning horizon (lead time + safety stock + replenishment cycle), not just the current month.
Click here to learn more about Adjusting Forecasts and Forecasts that need help.
Leveraging Dashboards for Actionable Insights
Netstock's dashboards act as an early warning system for potential inventory issues.
Daily and Weekly: Review Stockouts & Potential Stockouts to identify critical items and take preemptive action.
Regular Assessments: Evaluate Surplus Orders & Excess Inventory to prevent overstocks and free up working capital.
Monthly: Review New Items to ensure they are correctly classified and forecasted.
When examining these dashboards, focus on stocking indicators, policy settings (lead time, safety stock, replenishment cycle, target fill rate), data accuracy, and forecast alignment. Utilize supersession functionality if product replacement is required.
Click here to learn more about New Items and supersessions.
Streamlining Ordering
Let Netstock create recommended purchase orders or transfers to simplify the ordering process.
Apply Filters: Narrow down the orders by buyer, category, port of loading, etc. Input look forward days as needed.
Review Recommendations: Investigate any orders that don't seem right by checking stocking indicators, policy settings, data inputs, and forecasts. Adjust order recommendations if needed, but also address the root cause.
Top-Up Functionality: Use this to review items that may need to be ordered before your next ordering cycle, or to hit specific targets (value, volume, weight, etc.).
Download to ERP: If your ERP facilitates it, download orders directly into your ERP system. If not, download and import a CSV file, or manually enter the recommendations.
Click here to learn more about Placing Orders easily and quickly.
Regular Policy Reviews
Review policies (stocking indicators, target fill rates, lead times, and replenishment cycles) every 3-6 months, or more frequently if you have short lead times and replenishment cycles.
Evaluate Needs: Determine whether to increase or decrease target fill rates or adjust replenishment cycles for certain items or categories, based on risks, product performance and market insights
Review Stocking Indicators: Regularly check for slow-moving or obsolete items.
Ensure Accuracy: Make sure lead times are as accurate as possible, especially for items with a high supply risk or where supply chain disruptions are impacting shipping times.
Click here to learn more about Classification & Inventory Policy and Setting up Policy Defaults.
Maintaining Data Quality
Accurate data is the foundation of Netstock's effectiveness. Regularly review our data quality reports and address any inconsistencies.
Click here to learn more about Data Quality and Validation.
Summary
By integrating these five key areas into your routine, you'll transform Netstock from a tool into a strategic partner, driving your inventory management to new levels of efficiency!