Inventory woes are not limited to the big guys.
Small and medium-sized companies reach a point in their growth where they have a large amount of cash tied up on warehouse shelves, and a complete lack of visibility into that stock. Ironically, despite the large investment, they struggle with stockouts – they have too much of what they don’t need, and not enough of what is needed to fulfill orders.
These businesses lack the proper tools to effectively manage inventory.
That was definitely true in the case of , a designer and engineer of architectural speakers for in-home audio, outdoor audio systems, and commercial applications. Constantly on the cutting edge of speaker technology and innovation, they strive to raise the bar when it comes to speaker design. The company is headquartered in Hurricane, Utah, with distributing locations in the Netherlands and North Carolina. TruAudio is sold exclusively through a dealer network and authorized distributors in over 60 countries around the world.
Struggling to Tame the Inventory Beast
Despite their rousing success, TruAudio has a great deal of competition. Angela Daugherty, Controller at TruAudio, noted that stock outages were hampering their ability to deliver, compelling dealers to look elsewhere to meet customer demand.
Kary Wawrzyniak, EVP of Operations, lamented the struggles with their former inventory management system – an unwieldy spreadsheet that contained 75 columns and over 500 rows of data. Being a manual process, one erroneous entry could lead to inventory chaos.
Justin Dudley, Logistics Director at TruAudio, added that despite the complexity of the spreadsheet solution and the painstaking effort in developing and maintaining it, it didn’t provide them with the insight they needed for informed decision-making.
Meeting the Inventory Management Challenge
Russell Graf, Netstock’s Vice President of Sales, North America, highlighted the software company’s commitment to the midmarket segment. Netstock recognizes that small and medium-sized businesses are facing the same supply-chain complexities that the big guys have always had. However, most are operating at a disadvantage – not having the right tools to cope with the challenge. So Netstock developed a solution accessible to the midmarket that meets their needs.
Angela recalls a fact-finding call with Russ, happily discovering that Netstock integrates with their ERP solution, Microsoft Dynamics GP. Since implementation, they have achieved a level of visibility into their stock levels that in recent years, TruAudio has been able to enhance their customer service by offering guaranteed stock on certain items for their clients – something impossible before Netstock.
Kary enjoys Netstock’s ease of use. He noted that it has been both easy to implement and easy to maintain. Furthermore, dashboards provide instant updates on vital inventory statistics, excess stock, and more, allowing the company to react quickly to change.
Angela, with an accountant’s eye, has seen the effect Netstock has had on their bottom line. They’ve been able to shave nearly $1 million off their standing inventory investment. What have they done with the increased cash flow? Justin answers: additional facilities, new products, marketing, and new materials for engineering. In short: They could invest in their own growth.
After implementing Netstock, TruAudio is now experiencing a new era of efficiency and growth. To sum it up, Justin adds: “There's the accountability and visibility that Netstock provided that we never had. I would recommend Netstock to anybody managing inventory in any way, shape, or form in a company of our size.”
Next Steps
Are you facing struggles similar to TruAudio? Are you looking to prevent stockouts with inventory optimization software? Netstock is the premier solution for inventory demand planning, management, and optimization.
Would you like to learn how Netstock can help you overcome those inventory woes? Contact us now and take the first step toward a lean and efficient warehouse.
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