Anatomical Worldwide releases $117k in overstock with Inventory Planner

“Inventory Planner is a powerful tool that makes inventory planning a simple, intuitive process that I actually enjoy. Best of all, it has produced great results for the business and saved us countless hours on manual Excel work.”

–Doug Welch, Supply Chain Director at Anatomical Worldwide

With a product catalogue more intriguing than most, Anatomical Worldwide sells healthcare education supplies – CPR mannequins, doctor’s office props, anatomy models and the like – to healthcare professionals, institutions and students based all over the world.

The Illinois-based online retailer is nearing 20 years old and remains one of the most respected healthcare education suppliers in the business, keeping medical professionals and educators equipped to learn and teach healthcare at a world-class level. Anatomical Worldwide sells mostly B2C alongside a smaller B2B division, with universities, high schools and medical institutions as their main customers.

As a company so valued by the medical industry, Anatomical Worldwide honours its responsibility to offer a smooth and reliable service to its customers, ensuring they receive the right supplies with speed and efficiency. Supply Chain Director, Doug Welch tells us how the brand transformed its inventory processes with Inventory Planner, releasing hundreds of thousands in cash to put back into the business.

GROWING PAINS

Anatomical Worldwide launched in 2005, so has a long history of developing its systems. Up until a few years ago, it used a custom operational model to run its backend processes. As business progressed, it became clear its existing workflows, especially in inventory, forecasting and repurchasing, involved too much manual input to be sustainable.

“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,” says Doug.

“The main tool we used was Excel. We’d create tables of lookups and calculations, scraping sales data from our ERP. It was a tedious manual task, and very prone to error.”

Recent years have racked the retail industry with a hard truth: losing track of inventory is a killer to cash flow, sometimes proving fatal to business. Running out of your best-sellers drains profits and erodes brand loyalty, whereas unidentified overstocked items can trap thousands of dollars in cash, better invested elsewhere to keep business moving.

In light of this, Doug searched for a more progressive, data-driven system that would allow Anatomical Worldwide to optimize its inventory levels and reduce the time and human error that came from hours of manual calculations. After researching the market, the brand landed on Inventory Planner.

THE BEST MEDICINE

Inventory Planner’s leading forecasting method uses historical data to make reliable, accurate sales predictions – taking into account lead times, market shifts and promotional periods.

It also grants full visibility of a complex inventory, offering key insights across granular variants, and with over 200 custom reporting metrics. For Doug and the Anatomical Worldwide team, access to Inventory Planner’s dynamic intelligence reports had a mammoth impact on how they make purchase orders.

“Inventory Planner makes huge amounts of data accessible with just the click of a button,” Doug says.

“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.

“It’s also really easy to import and export all data, and there are tons of integrations to get Inventory Planner to work the way we want it to.”

With such invaluable and accurate information at their fingertips, the company has saved hundreds of hours per month spent on manual Excel work.

“It’s hard to quantify, but taking into account how Inventory Planner has improved purchasing, FBA transfers, management of assembly orders and component stock and introduced automated emails, I’d say we’ve saved around 15-20 hours a week.

“The benefits of having a replenishment report generated in seconds with all the data I need to make purchasing decisions – that’s our biggest time saver.”

Access to more accurate data has allowed the purchasing team at Anatomical Worldwide to make informed decisions over which of their most popular products should be invested in, and which slow-movers can be pushed by promotion to release valuable cash.

“We now know what to keep in stock for our customers and can eliminate overstock liability,” Doug explains.

“In fact, we’ve made a 20% reduction in overstock compared to last year – and that released around $117k for us to invest into new products.

“It also saved us the money we would have spent on 3PL storage. In terms of time, expenses, and all-round effort, we’ve made massive improvements all round.”

A HEALTHY FUTURE

Anatomical Worldwide is a respected merchant within the healthcare education sector, and now with Inventory Planner supporting its complex inventory processes, the brand can feel confident to scale, knowing its stock isn’t draining cash, but actively driving profitability.

Doug couldn’t be happier with how the leading inventory planning tool helps the company better serve its customers.

“Inventory planning has become a simple, intuitive process that I actually enjoy. Best of all, it has produced great results for the business and saved us countless hours in manual Excel work.”

To explore how Inventory Planner can transform your forecasting and inventory processes, book a free demo today.