Do you have the Acumatica business intelligence you need to prevent stock disruption?

The recent supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic has many business leaders like you rethinking how you manage stock for your company. Like many, you're lacking the real-time insights needed to respond to interrupted demand, or were unable to fill existing orders because you weren't prepared for the level of supply chain disruption that actually occurred.

Companies that were able to successfully rebound and mitigate disruptions once they began happening relied on a couple of practices and tools to be resilient during unprecedented and rapidly changing external factors. Here are the tips gathered from leading distributers and manufacturers that helped their organization be better prepared to react during times of change so you can too.

"Don't rely solely on your ERP"

Yes, it's the job of your inventory and operation managers to record deliveries, manage shipments, and analyze your suppliers. Your ERP probably does a good job of tracking all your transactions but this process can be prone to delays and errors, and much more, it can become difficult, if not impossible, to see patterns in the noise.

Understanding stock management is crucial to your success. If you're relying solely on your ERP from a reporting perspective,  you may not be getting the big picture in a way that the right people can act on it in time, if at all. Business Intelligence provides next-level insights so you run a more profitable business and rebound faster from disruption.

"Distinguish Between Reports and Business Intelligence"

Distributors and manufacturers generate huge mounds of data, but are typically thirsty for insights. And if you're using spreadsheets to manage your data analysis, you're facing a greater uphill battle. Spreadsheets by their nature are not real-time, not secured, flat, and hard to share.

Relying on spreadsheets as your only means of analyzing data indicates you're missing a huge contributor to success: insights on opportunities gained from business intelligence. For example, if you can quickly track and analyze customer and/or product ordering patterns, you can avoid missing opportunities or challenges. You can monitor which products your key customers are buying, or perhaps more importantly, are not buying from you. And, your inventory manager can easily dive deeper into your data to discover if a product is sitting on your shelf for longer than you anticipated to avoid overstock or dead stock.

"Put actionable insights in the right hands"

Spreadsheets are creating delay in reacting to changes and trends. If you think about how long it takes to close the books every month, or provide a financial report to a department head assessing an opportunity, the moment to act may have come and gone, which means your company misses out on the chance to capitalize, or in some cases, avoid loss.

When everyone in your organization is looking at the same data in a format they understand, everyone will be empowered to make smarter, data-driven decisions that will benefit your bottom line. 

Acumatica data analytics software from Phocas Software empowers your team with the single source of truth for all your business data in an easy-to-use solution. Phocas aggregates data from the various sources like your Acumatica ERP or other operational systems into dashboards for distributors and manufacturers to see a coherent picture of the business. Your employees will be able to explore the data in the insights to proactively spot emerging trends, profitable opportunities, or potential issues.

If you’d like to get real-time insights from the Acumatica data at your fingertips, contact the Acumatica experts at Phocas Software today to schedule your 30-minute demo.