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Inventory Management Blog Post

Inventory Management’s Crucial Role in the Supply Chain

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What is Inventory Management and Why is it Important?

 Inventory management refers to the process of ordering, storing and using a company’s goods or materials. Successfully managing inventory allows businesses to meet the demand level of their consumers with an appropriate amount of supply. Ineffective management can result in excess inventory which runs the risk of spoilage, damage or a shift in demand that causes stock to pile up even further. If inventory isn’t sold before any of these happen, it is often sold at clearance prices or destroyed.

 In a survey of 2,467 U.S. supply chain professionals conducted by the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM), 58% of respondents reported that inventory management is a top technical skill in their field. It’s an essential component of keeping supply chains running smoothly. Effective inventory management requires a reliable technology platform and communication between all parties involved.

 Without inventory management, businesses would experience higher levels of waste and excess storage costs. Communicating with customers about product availability and estimated shipping dates becomes impossible when accurate and up-to-date information is missing.

 How Can I Improve Inventory Management in My Supply Chain?

 Effective supply chain management starts with technology. Eliminating traditional and often manual strategies saves time and reduces the risk of error. Digitally managing operations makes any information recorded simpler to share across an entire supply chain. If your company has already implemented a transportation management system (TMS), you’re already halfway to full supply chain optimization!

 Transportation management and inventory management are two essential parts of a successful supply chain. Transportation management systems (TMS) deal with the movement of products across the supply chain and provide a necessary platform for carriers, shippers and manufacturers to communicate. Inventory management platforms focus specifically on the quantity and type of product in a warehouse or other storage facility. Together, these pieces of technology form the basis for companies to get their products into the hands of customers as efficiently as possible.

For instance, when a company leverages a TMS to react quickly to a customer’s order, product moves swiftly out of the warehouse and is no longer taking up inventory space. That space is then available for fresher inventory to replace it. Inventory management systems can react to those quick shipments and ensure that the oldest inventory is being shipped first.

Tracking spoiled or faulty inventory is also made easier when inventory management and a TMS work hand in hand. With a TMS, products are tracked down to the SKU level and can be easily traced once they leave the warehouse. When an item is on recall, inventory management teams have all the relevant information they need to find and isolate bad product.

Certain transportation management systems like Kuebix TMS are able to integrate directly with ERPs like NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics. When integrated, these technologies offer logistics professionals increased shipment accuracy by eliminating the need for manual entry, significant time savings, and access to meaningful analytics for SKU-level cost allocation.  Integrations between a TMS and an ERP can help bridge the gap between inventory management and transportation management by sharing data between systems to make sure all parties involved have accurate, real-time information on inventory.

ERP Integration with NetSuite - Kuebix TMS

Optimizing Transportation Management with an ERP Integration with NetSuite

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Supply chains are getting leaner, faster and more efficient every year. In order to keep up with rising customer expectations, increasingly complicated shipping processes and growing business, many shippers are turning to ERP integrations to give them a leg up on the competition. Integrating a transportation management system (TMS) like Kuebix TMS with an ERP or order processing system like NetSuite can streamline logistics operations. By adding additional functionality like an ERP integration, any shipper can configure a TMS that is right for their business.

First, we need to understand what an ERP Integration actually is:

An ERP integration is a process that allows information to flow between an ERP system (NetSuite, for example) and a TMS. In layman’s terms, any information inputted into an ERP system can be seamlessly displayed within the TMS, or vice versa. This is especially useful for sharing order, product, and shipment information between systems.

How Do ERP Integrations Work?

By leveraging a common middleware connector, the group performing the NetSuite integration can map ERP order and item information to automatically create orders within the TMS. These orders are stored within the TMS in preparation for shipping departments to simply scan or enter the order number into a lookup field to get rates and begin shipping. Once the order is shipped, the TMS notifies NetSuite and updates the ERP order with shipment details. (Tracking number, cost, carrier, time in transit, GL code, etc…)

Each ERP connector includes a configurable trigger function to automatically create orders, status changes or approval processes to tell the TMS to pull the order details. This process allows for a seamless flow of data between the two systems. Once shipped within the TMS, shipment details are mapped back to NetSuite for accurate record keeping and visibility for all stakeholders.

Why do Shippers Integrate NetSuite with Their Transportation Management System?

With an ERP integration, shippers can:

  • •     Ensure 100% order accuracy – Since information is automatically populated within the TMS, the information is right, every time. It’s amazing the difference it can make when there is no longer any risk of human error because of rekeying. PRO numbers, product SKUs, weights and every other metric of an order appear automatically, resulting in 100% order accuracy.
  • •     Gain complete order visibility – Once an order has been booked for shipment, shippers don’t lose visibility to that order. All shipment details are mapped back to the target ERP system for accurate record keeping and visibility for all stakeholders.
  • •     Understand the true landed cost of goods – Since all order information is tracked and shared between systems, shippers can leverage reports and analytics to view the true landed cost of goods down to the SKU level. This means they can make smarter decisions regarding their company’s bottom line when they integrate purchase orders directly from an ERP system.

Building Trust with ‘Built for NetSuite’ Accreditation

‘Built for NetSuite’ is a program for NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN) partners that provides partners with the information, resources and methodology required to verify that their applications and integrations meet NetSuite standards and best practices. The Built for NetSuite program is designed to give NetSuite customers additional confidence that SuiteApps have been built to meet these standards. Built for NetSuite Kuebix TMS

When a partner achieves this noteworthy status, prospective integration customers can trust that the integration process has been thoroughly vetted by NetSuite itself.

Kuebix achieved this status in 2018 and maintains it to this day. The SuiteApp is built using the Oracle NetSuite SuiteCloud Computing Platform and drives supply chain efficiencies by providing out-of-the-box and customizable integrations to connect ERP and TMS systems.

With NetSuite and Kuebix TMS, organizations can achieve a significant return on investment by streamlining shipping processes and identifying cost savings. Automation of processes, including re-keying order information, helps eliminate manual tasks while access to more data, such as the cost of goods and SKU level, help organizations make smarter, faster decisions.

Case Study: How One Company Benefits from its ERP Integration with NetSuite

Summit Supply began as a Kuebix Business Pro account with multiple user seats to manage their logistics operations.

They immediately began seeing the benefits of the system, including time savings and reduced freight spend. With Kuebix, Summit Supply ensures that every order is shipped with the quickest or least expensive option to maximize savings and service.

After their first year, Summit Supply decided to expand its use of Kuebix by connecting their ERP functionality with Kuebix TMS through an integration with NetSuite.

Summit Supply NetSuite ERP Integration Kuebix TMS Case Study

An ERP integration serves to automatically populate order information into Kuebix from NetSuite. This means that Summit Supply never needs to rekey line items and they always achieve 100% order accuracy by avoiding human error. After making the decision to integrate its ERP with Kuebix is 2018, Summit Supply was up and running with its integration in about 8 weeks.

According to Cory Storr, a Client Care Specialist who uses Kuebix daily for logistics operations,

“The entire integration process took about 2 months. Kuebix’s engineering and integrations teams worked closely with ours to make sure everything was working the way we needed it to.”

Summit Supply’s logistics processes are now greatly sped up, making it easier for them to focus on their mission to deliver high-quality products to customers quickly and with great service. Instead of wasting time navigating between carrier websites and manually entering order information, all details are automatically populated within Kuebix to make rating and booking fast. Not only that, but documents such as BOLs can be automatically generated with the correct information every time!

Storr goes on to add,

“The integration with NetSuite alone probably saves us 2 minutes on each order. When you multiply that by 80 orders a day, that’s a lot of time savings!”

Summit Supply made the leap to eliminate many of their manual logistics processes by leveraging Kuebix TMS and is benefiting from that choice every day. Now they can be confident that each and every order is accurate based on the

information within their ERP system and know that the lowest cost carrier with the best service is chosen on every load. The company is looking forward to expanding its use of Kuebix by adding in automatic invoice audit to further speed up their operations. With every choice they make, Summit

Supply is able to deliver on its promise of being a team-driven, customer-focused organization that strives to deliver quality products in a timely manner, at a fair price, with unmatched customer service.

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