The BCN Podcast
Keeping you up to date with Microsoft, IT trends, and business technology. It's everything you need to know about leading business technology to stay in the loop.
The BCN Podcast
Rethink stock management to streamline fulfilment and reduce waste
Every missed pick, late shipment, or stockout tells a story, and it usually starts with a process that no longer fits the volume. We pull back the curtain on how wholesalers, distributors, and suppliers can replace spreadsheet sprawl and manual ordering with streamlined flows, real-time inventory visibility, and warehouse operations that actually keep promises. The throughline is simple: fix the process, then use technology to scale it.
Emma Portlock leads a conversation with Andy from productivity solutions and Fareeya, a senior ERP consultant, plus seasoned CIO advisor Mark Mitchelson. Together, we examine the hidden costs of inefficiency, duplicate data entry, long approvals, aging stock, and overnight integrations that slow the business. You’ll hear real examples: turning a 12-step manual order routine into a 5-step ERP flow, digitising stock counts with barcode capture, and phasing a legacy system off into modern Business Central. Mark breaks down demand forecasting across long lead times and complex variants, while Andy shows where quick wins live, staffing automations, certificate tracking, and mapping warehouse zones into the system for accurate movements.
We also talk data without the buzzwords. AI only delivers when the data is curated, connected, and current. That means consolidating files, standardising fields, and surfacing real-time signals so forecasting, seasonality insights, and exception alerts can be trusted. The roadmap we share is practical and phased: discover how work truly happens, pilot a high-impact fix, measure ROI, and scale in steps across orders, inventory, and warehouse workflows. The result is fewer fire drills, faster fulfilment, and operations that can flex with demand.
Ready to reduce hidden costs and increase control? Listen now, subscribe for more practical deep dives, and share your biggest bottleneck so we can tackle it on a future episode. Visit BCN.co.uk for more information about how we help Wholesalers with their digital transformation.
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to the BCM Podcast, keeping you up to date with Microsoft, IT trends, AI innovation, and business technology, always built around people and driven by expertise. We share practical insights and real stories to help you get the most from your tech so you can work smarter and achieve more. This episode is all about rethinking stock management and streamlining fulfilment for wholesalers, distributors, and suppliers. We talk about the hidden costs of inefficiency and how to fix them, the key processes businesses are adopting to streamline warehouse and order management, and some actionable steps to drive business forward and future-proof operations.
Emma:Okay, just to introduce the team. So my name is Emma. I'm Emma Portlock. I'm head of new business here at BCN, and I also head up our relationship with Microsoft. So lovely to meet you all today. I'll hand over to Andy to introduce himself.
Andy:Thank you. So I had the pleasure of looking after our productivity solutions team here at BCN. And we use Microsoft Toolings, predominantly the power platform, to make tools and solutions to make businesses' lives a bit easier and return a bit of time to the team.
Emma:Thank you, Andy. And over to you, Fareeya.
Fareeya:Hi, I am Fareeya Mahomed, a senior ERP consultant specialising in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central. I have spent many years implementing ERP for a wide range of businesses with a strong focus in finance and stock management.
Emma:Thank you, Free. And um last but by no means least, over to you, Mark.
Mark:My name is Mark Mitchelson. I'm a principal with Freeman Clark, supporting businesses in a portfolio basis across the country. Started my career with Unilever. I was 12 years as CIO for Sodexo and have done a number of um large-scale interim roles with companies from Sheffield Borgemaster and Liberty Steel to a slew of SMBs that are working exclusively in manufacturing, distribution, or construction.
Emma:Amazing. Thank you. So what we're going to cover today is we're going to talk through some of the challenges that we've seen from our experience of working in the wholesale industry. We're going to talk about the journey so far, sort of what we've seen from a tech perspective, where they're going to list some real applications of what we've seen with our customers, how we've helped prospects or customers in these areas. And we're going to kind of go through a let's rethink the roadmap. So with no further ado, I'm going to hand over to Mark, who's going to take us through some of the key challenges that we see and have seen in the industry. So over to you, Mark.
Mark:So this is not historical. This is right up to the date. It's current. And a number of these engagements we are working on as we speak. So we look here at the themes of where is my stock stored? Where is it? What warehouses it in whereabouts in the warehouses is? We can get into all sorts of conversations about replenishment stock, phase stock, etc. etc. But traditionally, this has been managed by tooling and teams. And we've seen this year companies that have done very shiny new ERP deployments of specific clients I work with at the moment, manufactures, stocks, distributes high-end office furniture. They've migrated from a whole slew of individual systems across to BC with CRM and done a joint deployment. But they do not have an understanding of what's happening on the shuttle. And they're doing that because they haven't gone through a process to understand what operationally happens in the warehouse or how they're managing the stock on a day-to-day basis. It was very much driven by the client's demand rather than an innate understanding of how MRP can add value. More so that the disconnect between CRN and VC is showing that as a business, they're unable to understand what customers are wanting, what frequency of delivery looks like. And what we're trying to get to now is layer back level of analytics and reporting over the solution to allow the business to understand the profile of what they're selling, the profile of the customer requirements, and therefore what they need to stock, or not, as the case may be. Certainly, so they can meet some very tight delivery timetables. If I got the right stock based on demand, again, a client we are working with at the moment has a challenge in understanding what demand looks like, similar to the previous example, but also trying to understand what future demand is. So this business manufactures in Turkey and in China, imports stock and then distributes, self-distributes on a B2B and a B2C basis. Their product is PPE, um, very um focused around shoes and boots, but a wide range of uh PPE in addition, but the main core is software. Their delivery times eight to ten weeks over water. So they really need to have a good understanding of what the sales profile does, the seasonality of that business, and how they can plan what their purchase needs to be and what their shipping needs to be to have the stock in the UK in their 3PL warehouse on time, ready to service their customers. Um, not as simple as it seems, because the the product they buy is not just 10,000 pairs of boots, X, Y, or Z. That needs to be profiled against sizing from size three, say, to 15. But you need to be able to profile that and then plan that across the demand. And understanding that requires um an ability to model and understand what the the customer requirements are, what the stock and what the sea finality looks like. Um how long have these items been in my warehouse? I I'm working with a tire distributor in the UK, delivers third-of-all tires every day to tyre shops across the country. Just managing 15 warehouses and what stock is in what location, which tire is in what location, whether that tire is within date, whether the the lots match, and whether the service in the client against the SLA, so the post office SLA of no tire has a manufacture data over five years old, for example, has been a perennial problem for this business. We're at the point of trying to use some analytics now to understand what that profile is and get into a new way of working around stock rotation, which should have been in place some time ago. I I think we would all agree. But it is a driving point in that business at the moment, um, how they manage stock in general, because they've got more stock than they need, and a lot of that stock hasn't moved in a long time. Valuation of stock. I was called to a client to do a due diligence exercise as part of the PE investments, which had failed. And that failed because the due diligence orders stopped on day one because they very clearly couldn't get an accurate stock valuation out of that business, and and and that prevented quite a large investment and a very interesting future project would have swung into action there, replacing those two, and they found an awful lot of stock that had been completely missed. And it just goes to show I think the again, the understanding of what the client demands should be and having stock levels that are appropriate. That tooling that was in place, both the ERP and the analytics that they had just wasn't up to doing that job. And and obviously some serious accounting issues around that. Um but we've managed to correct that, got into a good place, and that investment has flown through. But it underlines the point about understanding what stock valuation adds where it needs to fit in. Last point um, can I see my stock value in real time? I mentioned a minute ago a client that um manages PP stock. They have a 3PL warehouse, they have a web presence and an e-store for both B2B and separately for B2C customers, and their the business model was really driven circa 2010 on a technology stack based around NAV on-prem and some limited functionality around integration. They do not have the agility at this point because the interfaces between all components are set to run overnight in a very old-fashioned way. They don't have the as we said before, the innate understanding of what their cluster demand looks like and the ability to profile that demand. And we're currently working through how we can revolutionise that business and generate probably a 30% growth just off resolving the interfaces because they'll be able to meet the demand that the customers are placing on them today. A lot of that is based upon valuing what data and having that data in real time and starts to unlock potential that there isn't you can't achieve at the moment. My last point, I'm sure we'll come on to it, is the dreaded AI word. Obviously, there's a lot we're in that hype cycle at the moment, so there's a lot of discussion. How do I use AI in my business around how I'm managing stock and how I'm planning my activities? And my answer is not always the easiest one because often the issue lies in data not having been curated and managed and organised in such a way that those can be addressed. And we can deal with the low-hanging fruitful stuff that has been around for ages in terms of OCRE documents and doing simple document searches, etc. The real value comes in how we're curating this data now going forward and keeping it in locations that we can access a mix of on-prem, on laptop, on desktop, on file servers, in cloud storage, are starting to corral this now, using the tech that's available, using some of the tools that mentioned today, and starting to make that data accessible so we can actually layer on some of the advances of AI to understand why Tender X, Y, or Z wasn't successful, or why these 10 tenders were successful, what were the points that brought through the way into how we manage our stock more effectively, understanding customer need, looking at whether there is a seasonality or an event-driven reason for buying profiles and get a far better understanding of value.
Emma:Thank you so much, Mark. That was that was great. And, you know, good good insight there into some of the challenges you're seeing with with customers right now. And obviously, you've mentioned technology, and that kind of leads us on into you know, these are the challenges you're seeing from an industry perspective. You know, what have we seen from a technical perspective in the background um that's kind of supporting these these challenges? So obviously, if we go back to the um the 80s, we saw huge increase in things like hardware, um, then it moved into software in the 90s and 2000s, then it went into sort of data, and now you've mentioned the the dreaded buzzword of AI. But you know, AI has been around um a while. Back in the day when I worked at IBM far too many um years ago to mention, we did AI way back then, right? But it took us a year, two years to deliver. You know, these days it's it's obviously it can be a couple of weeks. So we've seen all sorts of things from kind of printers all the way through to obviously email, spreadsheets, etc. We've then seen the real growth in data and AI and having those specialist skills in it to actually make the most of it. You know, you don't know what you don't know. What is there out there for me to be able to do? Um, and obviously everyone we speak to is in a completely different place um for this journey. You know, some might still be you know running um businesses on on spreadsheets, some may already have a fully functioning ERP cloud um type uh system so that they're more appropriate for the the AI journey. So, Andy, is there anything that you'd like to add to that? Um any kind of thoughts or insights?
Andy:I mean, um I think that summarises it really nicely. I always feel old when I have to remind my kids that the internet used to come through the letterbox on a CD that I had to install on the computer. Um so we've we've kind of all lived through this to some extent. And although this is the the journey that we've seen with kind of industry across across the board and across the world, we're still seeing that this is a relevant journey that the organisations are taking. No, we're we're just starting a a a project at the moment with a company that are using carbonated copied forms. So when they go and do a piece of work with a client, they're filling in the paperwork, leaving like the white sheet with the client, they're bringing the blue sheet back for admin, and they're holding on to the pink sheet for their their their kind of personal audit trial. So there's a journey we're all on. Um, we're all in different parts of this. There'll be some, you know, early adopters that are probably a bit further on and are kind of pushing for the new, the new and the latest and greatest. There are some that are kind of, you know, for a number of different very valid reasons, might be um a bit more towards the the 80 side of things, but we can pick up wherever. You know, this is a well-trodden path. Um, so you know, looking at where we're at is the first uh the first step, and then understanding where we want to get to, so we can build a roadmap. It might be that you know we're moving someone from carbon copies to a more um digital form, and maybe that's all they need, maybe that's it, and maybe that's more than sufficient and covers, you know, brings enough efficiency in the business. Maybe that's the first step in many to get them towards you know a completely uh a completely different digital transformation. So yeah, it's just understanding that roadmap. There's no right or wrong, there's no good or bad. Um it's just looking at where you are and and where we kind of want to get to.
Emma:Amazing. Thanks, thanks, Andy. Appreciate that. So um obviously we've kind of looked at the kind of main pains, challenges that we see, the sort of tech that's behind it. And then that's brought us from the experience that we've had is to really bring this into three key operations that we see in the industry, and those being order processing, stock and inventory levels, and warehouse operations. So, what we're going to do for about the next sort of 10-15 minutes or so is delve deeper into each of these and the types of things we're seeing, how we're helping customers and what those next steps could look like. So, delving into order processing, um, Fre, if I could just hand over to you to just maybe give some insight of the types of things you're seeing and where that kind of leads to cost of inefficiency.
Fareeya:Yeah, of course. So, what I what I often find is that, you know, manual order processing is one of the areas which are most problematic and can even be seen as a blocker during ordering. You know, it introduces friction purely because it's a lengthy and painful process. You have the risk of um, well, you have a level of risk and inefficiencies specifically in an area which should be smooth and scalable. These inefficiencies have hidden costs, and in the long run, if not sooner, they can be, they can cause slower fulfilment, higher error rates, duplicate effort, and ultimately poor customer service or experience. Combining all of these inefficiencies, as order grows, order volumes grow, bottlenecks are then created, causing more harm than good, thus preventing scalability. So the question here is why are we still doing it this way? Why does it need to be so labour intensive? And the answer is purely because that's just the way it's always been done.
Emma:Excellent. Thank you. So I guess if people are hearing some of those things, what what do we then look at when we're kind of rethinking that that process? How could people look at this in a in a different way? And I guess, Andy, if I come to you the first instance. So assuming someone's on that kind of low digital maturity, they're at the start of this journey. You mentioned like the carbon copies. You know, what kinds of things could people do to rethink the process?
Andy:Um, it's really interesting. Every kind of engagement we we start, it is the process that's the key thing. Um, because we can make, you know, uh apps and automations and use AI and chatbots to make processes more efficient and easier. But a lot of the time, if we make the process itself more efficient, then there's less change that's required and kept kind of less investment in technology. So the first thing that's really important is just being open to that change. Um, a lot of a lot of people in organisations, institutions we deal with, the process is the process because it's always been the process. So being open to there's going to be a bit of a change, it might be a little bit uncomfortable, but as you know, we're we're in it together and uh it's for the best, um, is really important. Getting those people on board and going through that kind of change management process. It's also interesting who we talk to because um a lot of kind of middle-upper management have an idea of what the process is, which is right, but actually, when we talk to the people doing the work, the amount of work and effort that goes into that process is not known or fully understood. Um, we've done a lot of work with a kitchen uh manufacturer, and when uh the process was the order comes in, we just have to go through, look at what the stock levels are, um, order anything that we had gaps for, and then um it goes through, which is nice and straightforward, is is great. What we didn't realise till we started talking to the people doing that work is that there were 12 or 15 different spreadsheets they had to go to that different teams and different departments had put together, and everyone had their own slightly different way of doing things that pull that information in. And you know, these people are killing themselves over it. So, you know, we we've all got um those kind of hidden heroes in our organisation that are just coming in and slogging because this is the process, this is my job, I'm just gonna get on with it. And something that's really key when we're rethinking the process is going and talking to them and being able to uh ask them what are the what are the pain points that you've got when you're doing this? Because sometimes just changing where data comes from relieves the pressure and the admin burden on them so they can spend more time then on kind of those value ads tasks. So there's a lot that comes with it, which is why it can sometimes be a bit uncomfortable. So it's it kind of comes down to that openness to change and accepting it could be a bit uncomfortable, and finding those hidden heroes that are doing the slog to kind of keep things going and looking at how we can uh address their issues.
Emma:Amazing. Thank you, Andy. Really appreciate that. And then Fri, if I turn to you for someone that's more in that kind of in the middle, in that medium digital maturity, what's what's the types of things you're seeing there?
Fareeya:You know, moving to the medium digital maturity, as you say, is the next step is kind of moving along the lines of an ERP system, or you know, if you're not there yet, even a basic order management system. And you mentioned, you know, this 12 to 15 step process that users have been have been how they've been working. But these steps can be cut down to maybe five-step, a five-step process. I've had a client where ordering was done in Excel with a certain layout created and company logos, and then you know, you've got the title of the document at the top. But each sheet in this document, one was for you know, requesting a quotation from uh from the supplier, then manually converting that to a PDF, emailing it to the supplier, then um a requisition order was created and sent for approval to management. This was also a manual process in Excel, copying that sheet, changing the document title, etc. Then the next sheet was the actual order, copying the information again and again. And it's a long and repetitive process. But by introducing an ERP, we streamlined the processes where we were able to use purchase quotes within the system, click off a button, send that over to management for approval. Again, another button when the quotes uh can be converted to an order. What took my client about half an hour to an hour to do was now done within a matter of minutes. So we could even take it a step further and integrate that, um, integrate the ERP with e-commerce platforms or automation rules to make it even quicker and easier. But it all depends on your journey and the budget and your budget, of course. And um, you know, we can even phase this out to make it easier and cost efficient for you as well.
Emma:Amazing. Thank you. That's really, really great insight. Um, and then Andy, just coming back to you. So, say if someone's gone through the part that Fareeya just mentioned and they're now in that kind of high maturity layer, what what kinds of things are we seeing there? And I think you know, Mark alluded to this a little bit in when he spoke around that kind of forecast demand generation, those types of things. So, what are you seeing from your perspective with customers?
Andy:Exactly those kind of things. Um, so it it's it is great. And like business processes are fundamentally about data. You know, we have data coming in, we have to process it, do something with it, and then there's an output of some kind. So it's looking at the power of data, but being able to have that, to be able to see clearly and quickly, you know, what do we have, what do we need, where is it, where's it going to, where's it coming from, using that for forecasting. Uh, again, we there's a whole history of industry looking at forecasting, but now we have more tools with um AI and natural language to be able to do those kind of things uh kind of quicker and more efficiently. But then we also have those technologies. So if we look at the client I've got with the carbon copies, we're gonna digitise that form, and again, that might be it. But it might be that actually once we've got that in place, instead of having to type that form up, they can uh narrate or dictate what they've done at this job site, and then we use um speech to text to extract that, and then we can use AI to summarise that, or we can take a picture, we can get AI to look at the picture and describe what's going on. We can then just use that once we've got kind of the foundation. This is our process, we're happy that it is a good process. We've made it as efficient as we can with the kind of out-of-the-box tools. It's then looking at what we can do for a further value add to have that increased return on investment and greater efficiencies with all these new and exciting tools that are coming out.
Emma:Amazing. Thank you. So we've kind of gone through some of the things we're seeing and ways we're supporting and working with customers. So, what's the next steps? What do you do if any of these are resonating true? I mean, what's coming through to me, guys? Everything you're talking about is people, processes that the tech is secondary, um, which might sound strange, you know, coming from a from a tech firm, but I think that's the key bit around this is like audit your current systems, your workflows, what people are doing. And as you say, Andy, the people that are actually doing the jobs, let's find out, you know, how these things are actually created, um, automate wherever we can, like maybe do a pilot, pick something that might be, you know, a quicker win. Like you can do it, it's high value to the company, but it's quite quick and easy to do, like transforming an Excel into um, you know, automated or being able to visualise the Excel in something, you know, someone like me, who the Excel is my nemesis, I much prefer to see pictures, and then actually training teams on that, what's what's happening, what's changing, and then making sure that's kind of monitored and optimised. Because with all these things, it's never done. You're just on a journey where you're constantly refining and and tweaking. So thanks for that. So if we then move on um to the second area that that we spoke about, we're talking around like stock and inventory levels. So, Freya, if I just come to you on you know what what you've seen, you know, maybe an example and some of the kind of cost of efficiencies you're seeing in in this area.
Fareeya:Yeah. This is often enough one of the biggest issues or one of the most disruptive pinpoints that I found in warehousing. And that's clients have inaccurate stock levels. And to be fair, this causes a ripple effect across departments, you know, having too much of stock or having not enough stock. These stock outs lead to miss sales, overstocking leading to increased holding costs. You could have additional expenses where, depending on the type of stock being held, you know, you could have expired stock in your warehouse and then having to reject orders due to this and then having to reorder and making sure it's in on time at the end of the day, frustrated customers. It is quite important to make sure that your sales team and your purchasing teams know what you have in your warehouse and that we've kind of mentioned this earlier, but have having the visibility of that stock in real time.
Emma:Excellent. Thank you. And so in this scenario, you know, what would be your recommendation of rethinking the process in this area?
Fareeya:Um rethinking the process in this area, it's there's there's different levels, right? You've got as the lowest, the lowest level, where we could transform, you know, depending on on your technology journey, you have the ability to think a bit smarter with regards to whether it's your worksheets that are being used or you know, the spreadsheets, building formulas, um, conditional formatting. Um, I think Andy on your team, you have you have a bit more experience on making those sorts of things a bit smarter, am I correct in saying that?
Andy:Yeah, very much so. Um and it's things like we we did a a piece of work with um a pharmaceutical company, and you know, stock and bits are really important with with kickstarting a piece offered a uh a food retailer as well. You know, these things have shelf lives. So, like you said yourself for you that the once our stock's there, we need to know what it is, we need to know um how long we've got to kind of shift it and put it through that that supply chain. You know, we we don't want to kind of lose any of the money on this. So the food company we were working with, they essentially just had clipboards and they were going around still manually doing things, but they have visions of scaling and growing over the next five years and um acquiring other organisations and this, they know that's not scalable. The pharmaceutical company we were working with, kind of similar, they want to branch out into uh into other areas. So looking to kind of digitise that process um so we've got some structured data. And instead of having this checklist that they go around and they count to go back to someone else who then tarts it into a spreadsheet that saves it somewhere that someone else can report on, we've just got a really simple app that they can go around, you can scan a barcode, fill in the details, uh, and then all the information's there, and we're kind of good to go. And kind of building on a point you made a second ago, Emma, around those kind of proof of concepts and getting something in to show, uh, show what's going on. We're doing that as kind of a a proof of value. I think we call it to say, look, we can do something that's quite quick and quite straightforward, prove the value of it, and then we can have a look at how far we want to take it. Again, kind of going onto that journey. One of the decisions we have to make is we can do this, but should we do it? So doing something that's quite quick, that we can turn around quite quickly to show the value, to then look to make sure that there is going to be this big enough return on investment and allow that scale and growth across the organisation. So we've got that in mind when we're rethinking the process, what our end goal is, but we started with something quite small, quite quick to turn around to kind of that proof of concept test case.
Emma:Amazing. Thank you. And for if if people have then got to like that medium digital maturity, what sorts of things are you then seeing at that stage that that people are are rethinking and doing?
Fareeya:Yeah, you've got the basics all ironed out now, right? So the next step is moving more towards and an ERP. That's really speaking helping you to manage your stock better and in real time because at the moment they are manually capturing their stock and the orders for that matter on spreadsheets. It's also because someone is manually counting that stock and it could be lost in translation between departments and between people in the team, so the warehousing team, the admin team, or it could even be because of their current system being outdated. Now I've got I've got a client, um, current project that I think Andy is also working on. Both of you both working on this, and they have been using a 20-year-old, if not older, system which is completely bespoke to manage their stock. It's really outdated. Um they've experiencing challenges on a daily basis, this the system being too slow, stock is not correct. So, what we've done was we phased out the approach where phase one was um dealing purely with finance. And now in this phase two of the project, we are introducing sales order processing, purchase order processing, inventory, and uh that will be going live soon. Now, all of these processes can be managed within the ERP. Stock is captured then correctly. They have visibility of the items of what is waiting to come in, items that are on sales orders, waiting for customers to be shipped to customers. So they have that visibility, and it's not just one department that has that visibility, it's everyone that's using the system, everyone that's involved in that process has visibility and in real time. And then if you take it a bit further, you've got um coming down to stock takes, you're able to count your stock easily, either by you know introducing a barcode scanning devices for that matter. Now, for this client, this is not part of this phase, but it is in the plan for the future. So forecasting is also something that's that will ease or it will become better, as well as you know, all of those hidden costs that we that we described earlier, like your stockouts and your overstocking, those are now at a point where it's almost non-existent because it's a smoother process and transition.
Emma:Okay, amazing. Thank you. And so I guess you know, next steps again on this area, again, you know, audit your cover current inventory. What does it look like? How accurate is it? Um, again, tools is the secondary um, you know, part of that. So then have a tool that helps you do that. Again, pilot a solution, as as for mentioned. There's usually a you know, phase one, phase two, you you can't do everything in one big bang. Um and then again, you you monitor and refine this as you go along. So then moving to our sort of third and final area that that we really focus on is that warehouse operations part. So, Andy, if I could just hand to you and you know, just get your perspective on this particular area.
Andy:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is um kind of an all-encompassing area for for not just the warehouse itself, but the the staff there, the machinery, the you know, there's a whole infrastructure that goes into this and everything else around it. So we've we've done a load of work with um companies around like even shift management. You know, it might be we've got a dedicated team, when the lorry turns up in the morning, it's all hands to get everything loaded and unloaded and sorted out. So losing a person to that is uh is quite costly. And you know, if I need to ring in sick because there's a bug go around and then fine, but then the the team lead has to find other people to come in. So there's all of these kind of different bits and pieces. Again, with the projects we were talking about a moment ago with the pharmaceuticals and the food, highly, highly regulated. So each of the suppliers and the partners they're working with, they have to have set um certificates to show that you know the food meets certain uh safety standards, the that it's kind of halal food and you know, all of the legislation that comes with pharmaceuticals. Again, it's not necessarily around the stock itself, but it's part of the operational necessity of the organisation to track and manage those certificates and those processes. Again, incredibly manual, but we've put absent automations on top of that to try and relieve that administrative burden. So it's just looking at those wider operational impacts on the people, the machinery, the organisation, and kind of that ripple effect and everything else that kind of gets bulked in with it.
Emma:Yeah, that that's great. And you know, those kind of the costs of the inefficiency are all around the picking, the packing, the shipping, as you've mentioned, that the labour costs, and uh, you know, I know for my husband works completely different industry, but in the in the fencing industry in in construction, and if his supplier doesn't get the right amount of goods to him when they said they were going to, that supplier funnily enough drops to the bottom of the list for his next um big project or order, right? It's that kind of hidden cost as well. That are you going to lose business on the back of it because people won't use you as your supplier next time?
Andy:100%. The you know, company's reputation is is massive. So we we've done bits of work where we've had sensors to measure the vibration of bearings in machines so we can forecast when the machines are likely to break, so that we can pre-emptively book in service in and get machine parts in to keep operations going. Because if you've got, you know, if we're talking like forklifts, if you've got three forklifts and one of them breaks, that's the third of stock that you can't move, which is huge. So there's loads of those kind of picking in delivery and uh all these other things that kind of cascade off of these that can seem quite small and innocuous problems and issues.
Emma:Yeah, excellent. Thank you. And so I guess staying with you, Andy, when we you're actually then rethinking the process. So if you're at that low digital maturity stage, what kinds of things how can people get started? Because obviously this is a massive challenge in itself. So what kinds of things could they get started with?
Andy:Where we find kind of the the quick wins is just looking at looking at those bottlenecks. So it might be that it would be amazing if we can put sensors in all of our machines to you know keep them running 24-7. That might not be the first thing we need to look at. It might be, like I said, looking at uh staffing. So that we've got a process for if someone's sick, they can send a message in that automatically sends out messages to to others who are kind of on standby for overtime or have um volunteered to do overtime so that we can speed up getting other people in to continue that picking and everything else. So again, the people who have to deal with those headaches, the kind of the people in the warehouse, the warehouse managers who are picking these things up and uh the ones who are having to firefight is speaking to them to see where are these bottlenecks, where could we make potentially quite a small change to get quite a big difference. And then it's looking at the efficiencies that technology brings. So again, we're looking at digitising uh paper processes, and like I say, with the certificates, we now have for a couple of companies, we've got a database of these are the certificates from these suppliers, this is the end date. Great, having that is fantastic and better than what we used to have, but now we can very quickly build an automation that then sends an email to the supplier to say your certificate for X, Y, and Z is going to expire next week, please send us the new one. We can then report on that. You know, those things are really quick and easy to kind of implement. We can have a huge positive transformation for a business.
Emma:Excellent. Thank you. And then, Frere, if if people are a bit further along in that journey, so they're at that kind of medium digital maturity, what sorts of things are you seeing then?
Fareeya:Um, you know, the the easier one is all done, it's the quick wins done by by Andy's team. But on our side, we want to go down to the basics, right? We want to try and understand and sit with, I think we mentioned this earlier, but try to understand how the client works. Try to understand how their day-to-day processes work as well. And for that matter, how their warehouse is set up, because the way that the warehouse is set up, that can also be replicated in the system. For example, does your warehouse have a goods in area? Does it have a goods out area? Does it have a QA area? Um, so is it split into all of these different zones and then you know having to put stock goods have come in and now you need to put it away onto the shelves, you need to use certain equipment. All of these actions that you take that that's being done physically in the warehouse can also be done on the system so that you're not having to replicate and lose lose your stock visibility and lose that, you know, the way that you're working in your warehouse can actually be done in the system at the same time as well. So it's efficiency at the same time.
Emma:So I guess it's like automation, right? So it the systems are able to automate these tasks so things get done quicker.
Fareeya:Exactly. So those those setups, for example, um, and I think uh Mark mentioned this at the beginning of this webinar as well. It's making sure that your system, you one, you know how the system works, and two, you understand what the client requires because sometimes what the client needs and what they want is completely different. So we need to understand how they work, how they need to be able to work and translate that into the system at the same time.
Emma:Excellent. Thank you. Really appreciate that insight. And so again, you know, next next steps, let's um assess what that current warehouse workflow looks like, you know, what are the right tools to help that? You know, it might be a power automate app that replaces a manual task that currently happens. But you know, let's look at what those tasks are first before we put tools or tech in place. Um again, you know, use a pilot automation task first and um monitor and optimise. So I think those are some of the key um next steps. Thank you very much for the insight in those three areas, guys. Really, really appreciate that. So I think you know that's taken us through from order processing, stock and inventory levels and the warehouse operations, some of the key things that we're seeing, what we're seeing our clients face and how we're helping them. And all of these things are all underpinned by data. Data is absolutely at the heart of all of this, because even if you've got everything working brilliantly, automated, if the data coming in that's being fed in is erroneous or not useful, then everything coming out the other end will also be the same. And because it's so key, um, we're actually holding the next um webinar on the 9th of October, where we will be covering um data and how to cut costs and forecasts for the future. If you want to go into some more detail on data, please do join us for that. So I mentioned right at the top of the agenda um that how how do we rethink how we start on this, right? So we've given a lot of information, a lot of insight, but where do I, as a customer, actually get started? The way it used to be done, um certainly looking back at my IBM days as well, is we implement something, we implement an ERP or we we implement some tools. Our approach and what we've seen in this area and the areas that we've talked through is actually a very different approach. So discover what it is you need. This is going to be around kind of people, processes. What do I need? How is it currently done? And then how can I refine that? How can I make that better? How can I make it quicker? How can I make it more productive? Build that roadmap. Um, you've heard, you know, a few times during this is a phased approach, a pilot type approach. You know, this isn't an 18-month project where you're going to have, you know, 20 consultants with you for that kind of 18 months. Actually look at piece by piece and stage by stage, what does that roadmap look like? And underneath all of this is your return. You know, what's your return on investment like? What are the people involved? What's the technology involved and what's the goals? Why are you doing this? What's what's the end goal to make this a success? And then once we've done all of that and we have then done implementation of the things that we know are going to transform our business in the right roadmap for us, we can then optimise those things. As I mentioned, these types of engagements are never done. You can get them done as they are in that point in time, but then something might change. You know, taxes might be put on goods that we didn't have before from other countries. So there's things that you're going to have to refine within those processes and the solutions you've put forward. So that's what we were going to take you through today. And thank you again to um to everyone that's that's spoken today. I've really found that insightful.
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