The price of disordered stock planning
Anatomical Worldwide is an Illinois-based provider of healthcare education equipment, selling diverse items such as human anatomy models, training mannequins and medical training supplies to teachers, students, universities and medical institutions worldwide since 2005.
The company had used a custom backend model for years, and as business grew, developing it became unsustainable. Stock levels weren’t visible enough, and time-intensive manual inventory processes mostly based in Excel resulted in costly mistakes.
“We had several people working on purchasing from different suppliers. Each person had their own methods for forecasting how much inventory was needed for a given period – and this resulted in lots of stockouts and overstock.” – Doug Welch, Supply Chain Director at Anatomical Worldwide.
Taking inventory control from chaos to clarity
Anatomical Worldwide turned to Inventory Planner to gain more visibility of its complex inventory. With access to granular insights across multiple variants, the brand was able to pinpoint exactly which products were selling well, and which were duds – so could invest in the right areas to boost cash flow. In doing so, the brand has reduced overstock by 20% and released $117k to invest back into the business.
Additionally, Inventory Planner’s data-led demand forecasting accurately predicts sales based on historical sales information, meaning manual calculations and human error are greatly reduced when making purchasing decisions. With this tool, Anatomical Worldwide has saved 15-20 hours a week formerly spent on manual spreadsheet work.
“Inventory Planner makes huge amounts of data accessible with just the click of a button. The key strengths are the comprehensive list of KPIs, adjustable forecast periods, customizable filters and columns, custom forecast settings, automated reporting… the list goes on.”
–Doug Welch, Supply Chain Director at Anatomical Worldwide
Key Takeaways
- Inventory Planner uses historic sales data to provide accurate demand forecasts, taking into account seasonality, promotional periods and market shifts. Its dynamic forecasting method has saved Anatomical Worldwide 15-20 hours in manual spreadsheet work.
- Having reliable, accurate inventory data on a granular scale has allowed Anatomical Worldwide to easily target its underselling items, so it has reduced overstock by 20% and released $117k in trapped cash.
- Anatomical Worldwide’s product line is vast and complex. Inventory Planner hones in on products right down to variants such as size, style and colour – and provides over 200 custom reporting metrics for more informed purchasing decisions.
To read the full Anatomical Worldwide story, as well as the experiences of our other customers, please visit here.