Episode 413: 🏭🧱 Inventory Stock, Planning Strategies, and Cost Savings: From Supply Chain to SciFi

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner Brad.
What's demand?
Planning, planning, preparation, are they all the same?
I'm your co-host, chris.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onFebruary 28th, 2025.
Chris, chris, chris, last dayof February, did you know that
it's not a leap year?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Not leap year.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
And what is demand planning, what is forecasting
and how do we predict the future?
With us today, we learned allabout that Not leap year.
And what is demand planning,what is forecasting and how do
we predict the future?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
With us today.
We learned all about that withLon Porter and Sam Bush yeah,
morning, why?
Did?
I just jump in?
You scared me who just jumpedin I just jumped out of my skin
because it was like silent.
I was waiting to come and thenall of a sudden I just heard
Vaughn say something and it waslike really loud.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Listen, we come in with a bang.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
So, vaughn, you scared her, vaughn, you scared
me to death.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
How can Vaughn come in so loud?
He's probably one of the mostsoft-spoken people I know.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
He's got it.
I would call him a gentle quietsoul.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
He didn, I would call him a gentle, quiet soul.
I wouldn't even say anything.
How did I come in so loudly?
We don't know.
I was just thinking to myself.
I'm looking at this backgroundand I'm like man, I've got the
most un-podcastable backgroundever right.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Is that a real background or is that?

Speaker 4 (01:40):
a fake background yeah check.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
It's bland.
You need color there, man.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
You look like you're in an asylum.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
You do, you do.
I usually always have abackground, so I don't even
notice what's behind me, andwhen I switched this on I was
like, wow, that's.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
I've got like a TV stand at the back over there
with no TV on it and some medalsfrom years ago that I don't
want to let go of, like holdingon to my youth, and then a whole
bunch of like.
There's just nothinginteresting.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
No, it's okay, Put a picture behind you in a plant.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Just something.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
I told my kids that they needed to paint me
something that I could hang upbehind you, because it will also
be better for for sound andstuff to absorb the sound.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
But I can draw you a picture if you'd like and I'll
send it to you.
I'll wait till I die no, I, Ido like it would have been
better if you had your whiterobe or your white uh coat, your
white doctor coat.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Oh wow, yeah, that would have been.
Yeah, you're actually.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Then it would have looked like you probably had a
head floating in the middle.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Or you could have really looked like you belong in
an asylum.
I remember doing weird things.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
And now I feel like I'm watching Silo because
Vaughn's wiping off the cameralike he's doing the cleaning.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Why have I got this line down the middle of my?

Speaker 1 (03:05):
cleaning.
Why am I got this line down themiddle of my?
It's so weird what's going on,so you sam sam, you've watched
sila too?

Speaker 3 (03:08):
yeah, I just started watching it.
I'm almost done with season one, okay I'm not gonna say
anything.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
I'm not gonna say all I'll have to say is it is
amazing.
I started watching it.
I binged season one in a day,been season two in a day.
It was when I was sick, so itwas very easy to do.
And now I'm halfway throughbook two because as soon as I
finished the series I startedreading the books.
There's three books.
There's Wool, shift and Dustthe stories.

(03:37):
The books are just as good asthe show.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
If not better Adding to my Libby app right now.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Excellent, excellent.
Let me know what you think ofthem.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
What did you say?

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Silo.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Silo, it's on Apple TV, okay.
Oh it's it's it's a true,plausible, sci-fi, dystopia
movie series, excuse me, so what?
I like about.
I don't like movies or showsthat are so outlandish that they
can't be real, like the way Isaid this on another episode,

(04:10):
where that one guy runs into 40000 guys with machine guns,
tanks and and airplanes and hekills them all but with silo
it's so plausible and you cansee it happening and it's just
mind-blowing yeah, oh yeah I'mon the severance train right now

(04:30):
as well oh, I finished thatsame episode came out last night
instead of tonight, so it'salready out there okay
I'm on the seven train severanceis really good, but it's slow,
like it's very slow, but itstill keeps you drawn in and
it's good uh-huh oh yeah, I'm abig, I love sci-fi, anything at

(04:56):
all like read it, watch it intoit.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
But this I'm like oh, severing your brain from the
workday Sounds interesting.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
That is.
I was thinking about it and itdidn't really hit me until they
did one of the scenes.
I'm not going to spoil it,because it's the plot of the
show.
If you read it you can see it,but when the woman was on the
elevator and she got on theelevator, then got off the
elevator, then I'm like theyhave no memory other than
getting onto an elevator andgetting off of an elevator and

(05:29):
they have no recollection ofsleep or time outside of work.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
And they could be in there for days and they don't
even realize, they don't noticeit.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
That is so good.
I'm glad that the episode cameout last night so I can watch it
tonight, because I have to goto bed early, but I appreciate
that With that we didn't look tospeak with you because we
wanted to talk about books andmovies, which we could do all
day, or Dr Vaughn's wonderfulbackground.

(06:00):
We wanted to talk to you about Ilove this and then, with him
wiping it, now I'm just.
I just it's fitting Vaughn, youneed to watch Silo, because
it's fitting with yourbackground and you wiping the
camera, it just fits right in.
I thought you were doing it onpurpose, to be honest with you.
So, but before we get into theconversation, would you mind

(06:23):
telling us a little bit aboutyourself?
We can start with Sam.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yes, hello, hello, I'm Sam Bush.
I feel like I have a rehearsedlike.
This is me, this is what I do,but I need to update it.
It's been a minute since I'veupdated.
Okay, so I am a partnermarketing manager for NetStock.
Been at NetStock about threemonths.
Three months, yeah, threemonths Feels like I just started

(06:51):
, but also like I've been thereforever, so that's a good
feeling.
And then I am a podcast host ofAmbush on Air, which you can
see back there if you'rewatching this.
I should have said that to do myshameless plug.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Plug away.
I know right to do my shamelessplug, plug away.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
I know right Where's my light Better when it's on
right, okay.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
I have a podcast light that has like 50 settings
and it's the most hilariousthing on earth.
That's pretty cool, that'sawesome.
Based in Columbus, ohio, beenin marketing about 15 years, not
California.
Not California.
Not California as much as youwould think.
I am a Midwesterner, that's me.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, excellent, dr Vaughn.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Dr Vaughn, I'm a channel account manager at
NetStock.
I said yesterday to somebodythat I was talking to I've been
with NetStock since God was achild.
I think I was employee numberseven and we're probably around
about 300 employees nowworldwide.

(07:58):
So I've been in the businessfor a long time.
That is nuts, yeah, like 11years.
And I've had different roles inthe business for a long time.
That is nuts, yeah, like 11years.
And I've had different roles inthe business as I was going
along from channel management tokind of start off with sales
solution consultant.
I ran a sales team in SouthAfrica while I was there and

(08:19):
I've moved into the US businessabout two years ago that I
started in this region.
So I've come here as a channelmanager and we're focusing on
building the channel andreviving the existing channel
that we had and building betterchannel relationships with our

(08:40):
partners.
So that's kind of why I cameacross and we have started
building a team uh here in theus to do that and and
internationally, actually donmartin, who heads up the channel
uh in the us, has been wellworldwide, has been building, um
, building a channel team in allof those regions that we're at.
So, yeah, I'm I'm kind of oneof those guys when you start off

(09:04):
with a bootstrapped startup, itstartup and everybody's doing
everything, to get into a pointwhere we have to, kind of like,
try and specialize in certainareas where we can add value
rather than do everything likewe used to.
So it's been quite a journeywith NetStock everything like we
used to.
So it's been.

(09:24):
It's been quite a journey withnet stock.
It's now owned by an investmentbusiness in in the U S and
that's, you know, the reason forthe expansion over the last
couple of years, maybe since2020, last five years or so.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
The investments Wonderful.
And I have one question for youCuanto tiempo has vivido en
Mexico?
Cuanto.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
Cuanto tiempo has vivido en México?

Speaker 2 (09:46):
¿Cuánto, ¿cuánto tiempo has vivido en México?

Speaker 4 (09:50):
¿Cuánto tiempo?
My Spanish is very bad sir.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh, whoa, okay, we won't say that.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Lento lento I have no idea what you said.
I did speak Spanish, but thatwas a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
It's okay.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
Me vivo en Merida para dos años.
Okay, you answered the question.
Me vivo en Merida para dos años.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
sí, Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
A bit slow, but.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
I'll get there.
Well, if you immerse yourselfin.
I'm assuming they speak Spanishin Madagascar.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Well, you know, that's really been the problem.
I'm probably I'm on 502 days onDuolingo, so my vocab's good, I
understand the way the languageis put together and I'm
learning that pretty well, butI'm not immersed in speaking and
that's why, like, if I takewhat you said and I break it
down or you write it down, I'lllike if I take what you said and
I break it down or you write itdown, I'll be able to answer it

(10:47):
straight away.
But I have to try and processthat in my head as we're going
along.
So that's what?
That?
That's what takes so long.
Right, and it's all because I'mnot speaking spanish to people.
So, um, you know, I don't pickup the words.
If I read, I'm fine.
If I listen and do lingo, I'mfine.
But when I speak to people, Istart missing things because I'm
not used to hearing it.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
It's strange how that works sometimes, but I thought
you'd be immersed in it in yourday-to-day.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
but I guess, if you're like me, you never leave
the house either.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
It's the other world.
That's what I say.
I met my neighbor the other day.
He said to me.
I hear you're always in america.
I was like no, actually I'm upin my room most of the time.
I maybe travel once a once amonth, um, but he knows my he's,
you know, my wife is chattingin in spanish to him and and, uh

(11:35):
, he, you know he sees her allthe time and the kids, but he,
he doesn't think I exist or hethinks that I'm in the us all
the time, right?
No, I spend most of my timehere.
I'm just just in a roomspeaking to partners and working
right.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I know that life.
I always tell myself I couldjust get a small one room place
and I'd be fine because, I spendmost of my time sitting at my
desk.
I'm either at my desk sleeping,or in the kitchen.
And the office has 90% of thetime, the 10% of the time is in
the kitchen and the.
The office has 90 of the time,the 10 of the times in the other
places.
So so, netstock, can you tellus a little bit about netstock?

Speaker 4 (12:14):
so well.
I'll go back in history againbecause I've been around for so
long.
Um, but netstock, the thefounders of netstock and one of
them was a friend of mine,that's how I was employed.
He was kind of like the brainsbehind developing the software.
They had built businesses doinginventory planning and

(12:36):
optimization for many yearsbefore that for big corporate,
multinational businesses bigcorporate, multinational
businesses and they had like ateam of consultants that they
would then deploy into thesebusinesses and they would spend
years there helping themoptimize their inventory with
whatever the methodology wasthat they were selling.
And this went on for many years.
Our CEO at that point our CEOwas in Chicago, the developer

(13:02):
was in south africa and therewas an engineer in the in
australia.
They had all worked togetherpreviously in the businesses and
they'd split up over thatperiod of time and, uh, they
decided to start this businesscalled net stock and the idea
was really to take themethodology that they were using
and the consultants that youand the consulting businesses

(13:25):
that they were running andtaking the functionality and the
methodology and building thatinto the software and then
taking that software to smalland medium-sized businesses
rather than working with the bigmultinationals only.
And the idea really was to getaway from that whole consulting,
but it was also to be cloudfirst, remote first, which was

(13:46):
unheard of in 2010 when theystarted and yeah, that's that's
how we started we built software, started selling it to some of
the businesses in South Africa.
They obviously had a lot ofcontacts in South Africa with
businesses that they've beenworking with.
I've got few customers thenreached out to contacts that

(14:11):
they had in.
Sage in South Africa wasintroduced to Sage in North
America and a couple of years inroundabout, when I was employed
, had signed an agreement withSage in North America to white
label a product called SageInventory Advisor and that was
our first kind of channel tomarket with that product.

(14:33):
So I was employed at that pointto look after Sage in Africa
and the Middle East and some ofthe guys came over to the US and
started working with Sage herein the US and that was our, you
know, when we originally startedbuilding the business.
Since then we built obviouslyin Australia where the engineer

(14:54):
was.
They started building abusiness there, the US was going
, I was looking after SouthAfrica with our CEO and we
eventually then also employedpeople in the UK and so we kind
of got to the point where wewere covering all territories
across the world and then,around about maybe seven years

(15:18):
ago or so, we thought thebusiness through Sage was
starting to slow down and wefelt like we weren't growing at
the pace that we needed to.
We were looking for investment,obviously as a tech startup,
that's what we were hoping forand we decided to go directly
digital marketing.
We built a whole digitalmarketing.

(15:38):
Part of the business wentdirect to try and get more
customers integrated with 45different ERPs and systems that
we could get to try and kind ofdiversify.
And we did pretty well at thatfor a while.
And then, I think maybe two orthree years ago, we started

(15:58):
thinking a bit more aboutgetting back into channel and
how we because in the end,specifically for an application
like ours, it's ERP dependent,so the best way to market really
is channel.
So in the last couple of yearsthere's been this kind of swing

(16:19):
to get back into channel andbuild maybe not over 45
different erps, but at least thetop kind of uh vendors in in
the us and internationally andthen grow from, grow from.
There, as I said, we finallygot.
We were kind of one of thosesuccess stories that came out of
covert um we.

(16:39):
We had a a number of investorsthat were looking at us before
COVID hit and, as it hit, mostof them disappeared.
In 2019, there was one business, an investment business in
Texas, that kind of either cameback or stuck around and said

(17:01):
listen, let's just see what'shappening in the world and how
you guys, how resilient you areto this, and let's see what
happens.
And then, kind of like theperfect storm, we had a couple
of months where business wasvery slow and then suddenly
everybody was at home.
They couldn't get any of theinformation from their on-prem
ERPs and all the stuff that wassitting in the office.

(17:24):
The supply chain was a mess.
So they needed something to beable to plan better and try and
figure out what was going onwith the supply chain.
And here was NetStock.
We could deploy this productremotely through the cloud.
They could interact with itanywhere, anytime.
It was just sort of like one ofthose success stories that came

(17:47):
out of COVID and sales startedincreasing.
There was a huge demand for ourproduct and in October 2020, we
got the investment and, yeah,since then we've been a really
incredible investment businessthat worked with us.
We were really really lucky toget such great people and our

(18:08):
business is really focused onour culture and we try to keep.
I mean, we always say we try tokeep the culture.
It's impossible to keep thatsmall business culture, but we
try for the most part to do thatin the businesses be as
transparent as possible, be asflat as possible and be as
supportive as possible toeverybody in the business.

(18:29):
So it's still got that feel andwe were lucky enough to get an
investment investment companythat was, you know, exactly like
that.
They didn't want to come in andchange the way that we wanted
to do things.
They would advise us from theboard, they would let us, you
know, give us matrix that wedidn't have, that we needed to
try and adhere to so that wecould become a better business.
But they let us run thebusiness and do what we needed

(18:52):
to do.
And you know, that's kind ofthe philosophy to this day we
hire on culture.
It's a very big thing in thebusiness to make sure that we
keep that culture because that'sbeen, I think, or we believe
that's been the reason for oursuccess over all these years and
hopefully that's what willcarry on the success into the

(19:13):
future.
So there's a very long storythat I put out there, but that
kind of gives you the outline ofhow we got from 2010 to where
we are now.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, it was a good story.
I appreciate the story.
Culture is extremely importantwithin an organization and
individuals often forget thatbecause it's the people that
make up the organization andalso follows through or flows
through to the product as well.
With Netsoc, you mentioned Sage.
What are some of the otherproducts that it works with and

(19:46):
that I want to dive into?
I have a million questions onwhat it does.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
Well, the big ones really that we're focusing on.
Sorry, sam, am I taking up toomuch?

Speaker 3 (19:57):
You're good.
You're good, I'm like you cantalk this whole time, I'm just
listening.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Obviously Sage, all of the products that they, that
they supply, and we've beenpartners with them for a long
time.
Um, akumatica, we went intoakumatica and and uh, joined the
fulfilled by akumatica andwe're on their price list.
A lot of the.
We knew a lot of the partnersthere because originally a lot
of the sage partners took onAcumatica because they needed a

(20:25):
cloud, some kind of a cloudapplication for their customers.
Now Sage has got Intact, sothat gap's closed a little bit.
And then NetSuite was alwaysaround, so that's been a big one
for us, especially in the lastyear we did integrations with

(20:45):
netsuite and then microsoft wasprobably the newest one that
we've done.
Um, those, those are kind oflike the four that we're
focusing on now.
So we, we um did officialintegrations on app suite with
business central.
uh, we've actually got twoproducts, because one of the
things that we did was weacquired another business called
Demandworks.
It was also around 2020 afterit was one of the things that

(21:09):
the investment business saidthat we needed to do, and that's
more of a kind of startspunching towards that enterprise
level with their sales andoperations planning and that
type of stuff.
And we've got a demand planningmodule that has integration

(21:29):
with F&O as well.
So from a demand planning pointof view, we're able to connect
to F&O with that product as well.
So, yeah, depending on theproduct, depending on the
customer and depending on therequirements we could deploy on
both those Dynamics applications.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
So you, get F&O and Business Central.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
Yeah Well, I mean, we've got on-prem integration
with Great Planes and obviouslyall the on-prem products.
Nav AX, I think they would haveto create I don't think we've
got scripts for those but peoplewould just create files and we

(22:11):
would consume those and do thework that we need to do.
So throughout the Microsoftstack as well, we could connect.
And one of the great thingsabout that is that when there's
sort of a migration path for anyof those to any of those other
products, they can kind of takenet stock along, so you can
start off at gp and eventuallyget onto, you know, I don't know

(22:34):
dynamics or whatever the otherproduct is.
They can take net stock along.
We retain all of the historicaldata in net stock and one of
the big things that when youmove from one erp to the next is
that you know people think thatyou can take all your
historical stuff along or theyend up accessing both ERPs to
get that information.
We retain all that historicaldata because we use that in our

(22:57):
forecasting engine to do thedemand planning and you know
purchase order history and thattype of stuff to measure
supplier reliability and all ofthat remains in NetStock when
they move from one applicationto the next, so you're ERP
agnostic.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Pretty much.
That's excellent.
And for Business Central youhad mentioned, you work with
both the cloud version or theonline version of Business
Central.
Netstock itself is acloud-based product and you can
also work with the on-premisesversions of Business Central.
Netstock itself is acloud-based product and you can
also work with the on-premisesversions of Business Central.
How far back can someone workwith Business Central, dynamic

(23:35):
Nav or Navision in NetStock?
Which versions do you supportin essence?

Speaker 4 (23:39):
I don't know the version numbers but I can tell
you.
I mean, I'm trying to thinkabout how far back we integrated
with that.
It was many, many years agothat we integrated with Nav and
GP.
So you know, and it's a prettysimple integration, we just, you
know, read information from thedatabase, create flat files in

(24:01):
a folder and then send that upvia security Ppt to our site and
then consume it that way.
So it's a very simple kind ofintegration and we can change
those scripts if required ifthere was changes to the
database.
But I don't know if there'dbeen major changes to the

(24:25):
stocking information that werequire in the databases for NAV
or GP through those versions.
But I know we've got somereally old NAV customers and old
versions that we can integratewith.
So I don't think that should bean issue.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Excellent.
But as far as NetStock isconcerned, I like the
integration because then you canhave integration with anything.
If you're importing the files,I could have some other system,
so there's a lot of flexibilitythere, which is nice.
Who or what type of business isthe target for using a product
such as NetStock?
What you have in your offerings?

Speaker 4 (25:06):
Well, I think originally it started off being
the really small businesses.
We started off wanting to kindof be the spreadsheet
replacement and saying that Imean, everybody kind of says
that, but there's some reallybig businesses that are still
using spreadsheets to do theirplanning, which is pretty scary.
So the idea really was tocreate a purpose-built

(25:26):
application that would automatea lot of the processes and a lot
of things that people weredoing in spreadsheets to try and
calculate, you know, forecastsor classifications or you know
whatever they needed or what theorder should be, when they
should order all that type ofstuff.
And that was really the driver,because in small businesses a

(25:47):
lot of the time the owner is theplanner, is the marketer, you
know, is everything.
So having an application thatwould do all the heavy lifting
for them and then just give themthe answers and let them go
okay, I'm okay with this, or Ineed to fix this and let me have
a look at that, try and make itquicker for them or make them
more agile in the business, inthose small businesses, that was

(26:09):
really the initial kind offocus.
Obviously, we built theapplication a lot since then and
the functionality has now growninto kind of bigger businesses
and then with the addition ofthat demand with business, which
we call NetStock, ibp, that nowbasically closes that gap from

(26:32):
medium-sized business toenterprise as well.
There's overlap between thoseproducts.
So really anything from smallmom-and-pop business I think
complexity really starts comingin when there's manufacturing
involved or there's distributioninvolved.
There's more than one location.

(26:52):
Trying to plan, let's say, 100items in one location might not
be that difficult to do and wecan do that in a spreadsheet,
but when you multiply that by 10locations and you're trying to
manage those items differentlyin 10 different locations,
things start becoming a bit morecomplex, right?
So that's really where you needto start having some kind of a

(27:13):
tool to help manage thatinventory better.
So, from those businesses rightup to really enterprise
businesses that want to be ableto forecast at a channel level
or break the forecast up at acustomer level to see which
customers are affecting thatforecast in what way, or make

(27:33):
adjustments at different levels,whether it be top down or
bottom up or middle out Verymature demand planning teams and
then right down to the ownerrun owner run business that does
everything we, you know we tryand cover everything yeah, and

(27:54):
I'll give you like the marketinganswer, because that's, that's
obviously the answer, but thisis like a written one, you know?
uh, basically, it's anybodymarketing.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Answer to everything there is, there's always a
marketing answer um, but this islike the the most simple way
that I've learned to describe itand that's like anybody who has
around 250 SKUs or more arelike our ideal customer.
We'll do anybody, but that'sideal.
And then people have inventoryvalue of like at least 200k.

(28:26):
It's like a sweet spot for us.
So manufacturers, distributors,wholesalers, e-commerce
businesses those kind of peopleare what we talk to the most.
But again, like Vaughn said, wecan do the smallest of small to
that mid-market size businesshow we kind of classify it.
So business from 10 to 200million in annual revenue is

(28:47):
usually like our best fit for,kind of our average deal.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Excellent, Excellent.
So with small to medium sizedbusinesses or enterprise
business, your SMB andenterprise market you can cover,
which is good.
It's good to have a wide range,and I'm assuming there's
different functionality that youutilize based upon your scale
of use.
And thank you for putting in anideal number of SKUs
Understanding there can be somevariability in there as well,

(29:14):
too, depending upon how you needto plan, which is good.
So with it.
So how does it work?
How does it plan?
So it's a business, an SMB orenterprise business that needs
to plan its inventory and you'replanning procurement, planning
and forecasting sales.

(29:34):
And what else is going on underthe hood in there?

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Or what is it trying to solve exactly for small
businesses, smbs?

Speaker 4 (29:46):
Typically in that space, what we're trying to
solve is optimizing theirinventory, you know, making them
more efficient at controllingtheir inventory, because you
know the big pain points therereally are that either they're
holding too much inventory andthey're tying up cash and that's
affecting cash flow, or they'restocking out of items and

(30:07):
that's affecting sales andprofits, and you know.
So that's really the two majorkind of like pain points.
And then the other one isreally just the the time that it
takes to get to a point wherethey can calculate what they
should be buying and when theyshould be buying it.
And that's usually, you know,like we said, the forecasting
and a spreadsheet trying tofigure out what the min maxmax

(30:29):
level should be on the items,trying to know when to trigger
an order to make sure that youbuy in time, you don't buy too
much or you don't buy too little.
Most people are trying toeither do with some
functionality nativefunctionality in an ERP or in

(30:55):
combination with spreadsheetsand things like that, because
you know ERPs aren't built toplan on inventory.
You know we always say thisthing about.
You know when we talk tocustomers how much inventory do
you have?
So I have this widget.
How many of that widget do Ihave?
I've got 10.
Now if you look at the ERP, youknow exactly why you have 10,
because we can see when itarrived, how much of it was sold

(31:16):
, how much of it is inbound,where it is in which location.
That's what an ERP does itgives you the factual
information about that item andit tells you what you've got and
where it is right.
So now you know that.
But how much should you have?
And that's that's really thetrick.
Should it be 10?
Should it be 20?
Should it be 5?
What's the optimal amount ofinventory that you should be

(31:38):
holding today to make sure thatyour customers get what they
want and that you're not tyingup too much cash?
And that's really what wecalculate for for customers in
theP.
And then what we do is weproject that day by day, 365
days, into the future to say,well, this is what you should
have today and this is how itcompares to what you have in
your ERP, and this is what youshould have tomorrow and that's

(32:00):
how we think it's going tocompare to what you will have in
your inventory tomorrow, takingthe forecast or sales orders
that are due or whatever it isinto consideration, or inbound
purchase orders.
This is what we think your levelis going to be based on what we
see in the erp, and this iswhat it should be tomorrow, the
next day, and so on and so on.
And then we plan against thatto say how do we get from where

(32:23):
you are to where you should be,and we create a purchase order
plan for that, saying well, ifyou order on this time and we
take the lead time intoconsideration and all your
policies and what you want toachieve with the business, this
is what you should buy and thisis when you should buy it, or
this is what you shouldmanufacture, and then this is
when you should manufacture it,or even this is what you should

(32:44):
distribute to your network atwhat time, to make sure that
that network also has optimalinventory in each of those
locations.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Okay, yeah, so I think that's one of the biggest
challenges for SMBs, wherethey're coming from an ERP,
moving to Business Central andeverything's brand new to them
and, like as you said, a lot ofthem do all of the forecasting,
typically in a spreadsheet orbased on emotions or maybe

(33:14):
experience.
Right, how do you manage, foran organization has never had
any proper forecasting andremember some of these.
Sometimes you work withindividuals in the organization.
Where I've been with a companyfor 20 plus years, I know when
or when I should order.

(33:34):
That's a challenge in itself.
So how do you navigate aroundthat and consider these data
points?
When we consider these datapoints, when we calculate
forecasting versus, hey, I'vebeen here for 20 plus years, I

(33:55):
know I should order 20 of thesebecause it's seasonal or
Christmas is coming around,right, so how do you handle
those challenges?

Speaker 4 (34:11):
right.
So what?
How do you handle thosechallenges?
Well, those people in abusiness either make or break an
implementation with us, right?
I'm sure there's a lot of thatin in all implementations.
But um and you, you touched onit exactly trust.
Trust the calculations, right,and that's what we need to get
to, and it's a process that weneed to go through in the
onboarding to get those peopleto understand the calculations

(34:33):
and trust the calculations, sothat when we spit out a
recommended order and say thisis what we think you should
order today, they can look atthat and say I trust that
because I understand how theinputs and the calculations work
.
To give me that and it's goingto give me a better result than
my gut feel.
We call them the spreadsheetslaves because they have a

(34:58):
spreadsheet called masterinventory, something, something
that only they know how to useprobably has more errors than
they wish to admit, because it'sbeen around for 10 years.
That and how they feel aboutthe business.
And, yeah, it's a process really, and those are the people that
we need to convince.

(35:19):
But I tell you that thosepeople could be your biggest
ally and your worst enemy,because once they do understand
the calculations and theyrealize that this is going to do
all of that stuff better thanwhat they can.
You know if they can get pastthe ego of, like, I know better
than the application does.
But you know, that really isjust a process of understanding

(35:41):
the calculations and buildingtrust with those people.
So, yeah, you're right, and werun into those people.
So, yeah, you're right, uh, and, and we run into those people,
uh, a lot.
I mean, we, we went into ameeting with the guy asked us to
sign an nda, uh, before heshowed us his spreadsheet,
because I've never heard of thatbefore I've come across and and

(36:09):
you know I mean we laugh, buthe, he spent, you know, years
perfecting this, the spreadsheet.
So it is difficult letting go ofthat.
It is difficult, you know,going.
Hey, you know there's anapplication out there that might
do this better than than I do,even though I've been in this
business for so long and I'vebeen building and I've been

(36:30):
buying for this business for solong.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
So, yeah, it's a challenge it is, chris hits the
good point.
He was talking about the trustfactor of it and, chris, we run
across this for eipimplementations all the time.
It's knowledge in someone'shead.
They have a gut feel.
They don't want to let it go,but they could also be oh, this
doesn't work or this doesn'tmake it.
But a lot of businesses don'tunderstand the risk of having

(36:53):
everything relying on one personor this one person spreadsheet
to run a business because, oh,chris understands how to
calculate and forecast and wejust trust Chris, when Chris
could be over ordering, underordering or even inhibiting
growth of the business becauseof the way that he's doing it.
Not to pick on you, chris, I'mjust using you as an example but

(37:16):
it's.
It's.
It is a challenge and you hadmentioned also, like the letting
go, because there is the.
I created this.
I do this all the time.
I know what I'm doing and oh,now that they have another tool,
I'm not going to be needed.
Instead of taking a look backand I can use my time and be a
little more valuable with mytime or have more value in my

(37:40):
time I can't even talk todayhave a little more value in my
time to be able to do otherthings than just plugging
numbers into a spreadsheet.
I can actually look at aforecast, look at a plan and
then review that plan to makesure that it fits with it as
well.
I have a question withforecasts and, chris, I know you

(38:01):
have a bunch of them.
I'll mute myself.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
No, it's all good.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
When calculating forecasts for different types of
businesses, is it possible tocalculate seasonality and
weather into it?
I've always wondered about that, thinking how weather could
impact planning and forecasting,as well as other trends.
Because just go back to COVID,which never existed at this

(38:28):
point, because I think we allforgot about it as we all lived
through it for many years.
But doing a forecast duringCOVID time or doing forecast
versus other times may bedifferent, so is there a way to
put in variable factors?
And then also wintertime theshipping may take longer than
during the summertime.
I'm just trying to throw outsome ideas and I've always had

(38:49):
these questions, as if there wasa way that that gets accounted
for in a forecast.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
Yeah, you know, it's things that we've been
discussing and wanting to do,for, you know, discussing for as
long as I remember aboutforecasting is how do we get the
forecast more accurate and howdo we look at other factors that
might influence the forecastoutside of the internal
information and things that wehave.
And you know, I think the waythat AI is going at the moment,

(39:23):
that's going to be the next step.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Right, I wanted an episode without that being
mentioned.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
I guess we can't do it.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
No, it's okay, I was going to say at the end is this
is the nose most non-ai episode.

Speaker 4 (39:37):
Well, well, look at it this way let's not, let's not
bring ai in.
How do we take uh?

Speaker 2 (39:42):
you can't, by the way , I was joking.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
How do we take information from sources outside
of the ERP, which is what werely on and market knowledge?
Because obviously we allow thecustomer to override forecasts
or input promotions and we havethese smoothing algorithms in
the forecast to try and get thebest fit forecast or the most

(40:08):
accurate forecast we possiblycan right, because forecasting
is not an exact science.
It never has been, probablynever will be.
So what other factors mightinfluence that forecast?
And that seasonality thatyou're talking about is actually
something that we've, you know,not struggled with, but it's
been challenges that we've hadwith some customers as well.
So, for instance, a customerthat sells seed and the rains

(40:32):
start a month earlier andsuddenly the seasonality is
moved from one month to the next, and how do you adjust for it?
Now, there are ways that we canadjust that in the forecasting
engine, but it's a manualintervention, usually from the
customer understanding theirmarket, understanding what

(40:55):
effect that weather has on them,and they can make adjustments
pretty easily in the forecastingengine.
But can we get to a point wherewe can read other data and then
use that data to predict?
Because this really gets to apoint where we start predicting
more rather than relying on onmarket knowledge to be able to

(41:15):
do that, and that's really, forme, the exciting part of being
able to to, not only because thethe challenge with that again
is now what data do you use,right, right.
So I think with AI, the nicething about that is that you can
test different data sets andalso with machine learning and
the way that AI is going.

(41:36):
Now you know there's moreprobability and you can see.
You can then track thoseforecasts and see how well the
forecast is doing against yoursales.
But yeah, it's not somethingthat.
It's something that we've beendiscussing for a long time and
I'm quite excited about beingable to get that into the

(41:57):
forecasting.
But yeah, it's still a longroad to go, because you know
what information is actuallyvaluable.
What's the right data for yourbusiness, is the right
information to be looking at?
I mean, weather's quite aninteresting one, probably a good
example of where we can get themost value out pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
But you know, weather forecast is as reliable, right
yeah?

Speaker 4 (42:22):
yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
The other thing that comes to mind right now is all
the tariffs, so all thediscussion of tariffs across the
market.
We're getting a little bit ofconversations in our sales cycle
just about maybe like let'slook at this in a couple of
months, once some of theconversations around tariffs
tariffs have settled.
So one thing that this is againa little marketing plug we're

(42:48):
doing a webinar about tariffsand how our AI tool can kind of
help you adjust quickly, whetherit's, you know, in the moment
of a big crazy change or youknow, managing the manual side
of it now.
Um, but our CTO and one of ourcustomers are doing just his use
case on some of the seasonalityand flow and change of how he's

(43:10):
used our AI tools on March 27th.
So if anybody's interested,it's on the website.
But that's a good likeconversation that we're starting
to have more and more openlyabout some of those additional
prediction data sets that wecould use.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
So you could have to meet.
Go ahead ben I'll stop afterthis.
I promise so you can havevariable suppliers to take into
some of those considerationssuch as tariffs from the again.
Nobody knows what will happen,but just say there's tariffs,
the variable rates acrossdifferent regions or even

(43:48):
limitations on shipping fromdifferent regions.
I think of when ports close.
The port gets backed up to beable to demand or forecast or
predict or plan for othersuppliers who may come in from
different channels, so that youcan keep up with your demand
from your customer.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yeah, yeah, Just like for forecasting in itself.
I've done a lot of forecastingtool implementation in my career
.
What I always find challengingis that forecasting, depending
on the data points that you get,you're very, very limited and

(44:25):
it's always very difficult toget 100% accuracy.
You can get there fairly close.
Do you find in the near futureif the data is available for
your application to use whenyou're forecasting?
Do you find that it'll improveeventually?
You know again and I've beenimplementing ERP for roughly,

(44:50):
roughly two decades, almost twodecades here and that's always
been a challenge for me oftrying to not only convince
users to trust the data becausethey know it's like, oh, it's
just based on my history, but itdoesn't consider all the other
data points, and some of thosedata points or data sources that

(45:11):
they get to help calculate thisalso may not be accurate as
well.
Like you said, weather forecastis never always accurate.
Do you find that thateventually will change, as long
as data sources are madeavailable for it to consider?

Speaker 4 (45:31):
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I think forecastingwill improve.
How much it will improve iskind of left to be seen.
But I think you know there's somuch more to consider.
Like forecasting has never been, you know, 100% accurate ever
and I don't think it's evergoing to be.

(45:51):
It's what you do with thatforecast and how you manage that
.
Are we managing the forecasterrors?
Are we looking at that andsaying in the application, what
we do is we look at the averageerror over a period of time and
we look at things like whetherthat error is over forecasting

(46:13):
or under forecasting and then weuse that in a calculation to
allocate a risk to the forecast,because there's a lot more
things that affect that forecast.
It might be an erratic salesitem, it might not be seasonal,
you know, or it might beseasonal but there's not enough
information to see theseasonality.
There's all these things thatcould help make that forecast

(46:36):
better, but it's in being ableto understand how risky it is to
forecast that item.
And then what we do is takethat risk and we use that risk
to calculate optimal safetystock.
So if we see that you're overforecasting and that means
you're probably buying more thanwhat you.
You know we're doing as well aswe came with the forecasting,
but we're still over forecastingand buying more than what we

(46:58):
should.
We're probably holding moreinventory than we should be,
than we need to.
We're probably not going tostock out, so we automatically
decrease your safety stockcalculation based on that.
So we look at inbound andoutbound risk all the time.
So forecasting is just one partof it to get to that optimal
inventory level.
Yes, we want the forecast to beas accurate as possible.

(47:18):
We work really hard at gettingour forecasting engine and all
the settings to make it asaccurate as possible, but we
know it's never going to be 100%.
So now we take the error and wesay what's the risk of us
getting this right?
And based on that, what?
How much do we need to up thesafety stock or or drop the
safety stock?
So if we're under forecasting,we're going to be a risk of
stocking out.

(47:38):
We increase the safety stock totry and overcome that risk.
And then the same with yoursupply risk.
So we look at your purchaseorder history.
We say, okay, you know, onaverage, um, you know, we look
at all the purchase orderhistory.
We do some calculations to seeif they're like blanket orders
and, uh, you know, orders thatare completely out of scope and
a whole bunch of stuff to to getthat as, as you know, accurate

(48:01):
as you possibly can.
And then we look at your, youraverage lead time to get an item
.
So, yes, you know we're goingto get this item in three weeks,
but on average we can see withthe purchase order history that
it's coming in four weeks.
So you're at risk for latedelivery on average by a week.
We'll increase the safety stockbased on that risk.
So we're not fixing the problemwith the supplier and maybe

(48:23):
that's up to the customer to gonow speak to the supplier and
say, hey, is this lead timesupposed to be four weeks?
Should I go to another supplierand manage that supply risk?
And the same on the forecast.
Can we better forecast?
Do you know something aboutthis item that you can input on
market knowledge or, like yousaid, weather or that type of
stuff to try and get this moreaccurate?
But getting a forecast onepercentage more accurate than it

(48:49):
was I don revolutionary in theplanning kind of realm.
It's what you do withinformation and how you get to a
point where you're calculatingoptimal stock levels, you know,
and making sure that they don'tstock out and making sure that
they don't, you know.

(49:09):
The other thing isclassification.
So now you've got an item andyou know you it's a.
You're really struggling withthe forecast, but it's a low
volume, low value item that'snot really contributing much to
the business.
How much time do you want tospend getting that absolutely
accurate right, Whereas if it'sone of the most important items
in your business that's runningyour business you want to be
investing your time and yourmoney there to make sure you get

(49:31):
that right.
So you know there's so manysort of aspects to getting to
that point, not just theforecast.
The forecast is just theinitial input and, yes, the more
accurate the forecast, thebetter the planning is going to
be, because the better we canplan again, If we know what
we're going to be selling,obviously we can plan better.
But there are things that we doto kind of mitigate the risks

(49:53):
of that forecast not being 100%.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Yeah, those are great points and I appreciate you
sharing that, because it'salways been a struggle, even
with my conversation withclients, where they're asking
you know, how can I trust thisis going to be 100% accurate?
And I'm like, well, I can'treally tell you.
It's going to be 100% accurate.
It'll get you really reallyclose right.
It gets you where you can justdecide what you want to do

(50:18):
without you having to do all themanual work, all the
forecasting.
This tool will do that for you.
Which kind of leads me to thenext question that you need to
have a proper calculation offorecasting, and how long of a

(50:46):
history do you need us to getyou the most out of it?

Speaker 4 (50:52):
I would say three years would probably be optimal.
Three years would probably beoptimal, you know, because if
there is seasonality over wecould 24 months.
We could get seasonalitybecause obviously we can see
year on year what's going on.
With three years we've got somereally solid seasonality
because we now have checked overthree years where how seasonal
that really is right.
So I would say three yearswould be optimal.

(51:13):
Um, but we do.
You know, our forecasting enginetakes into consideration new
items.
So if they've just come in andyou've input a forecast, we
treat those items differently.
We treat items, young itemsthat have, you know, been around
for maybe three or four monthsdifferently.
So the forecasting engine takesthose things into consideration
.
We can also do things likesupersede.

(51:33):
So if you have replacementitems, we supersede historical
data from one item onto the newitem and it will use that
historical data to create aforecast for the new item.
We can do group seasonalforecasting.
So if you have some items thathave been around for two years
and you add a new item to thatgroup, it can use the seasonal
trend of that group to predictwhat the seasonality is going to

(51:57):
be for that item.
So there's tricks that we havein the forecasting engine.
That will look at that.
But yeah, if it's a seasonalbusiness, we'd need at least two
years to find that seasonalpattern.
Otherwise, you know, we couldstart with three months worth of
historical data.
Also, we can import data.

(52:18):
So if that data is sitting in aspreadsheet somewhere or if
it's in your previous ERP, likeI said, we probably have a
connector or we could probablytake that information it's just
sales by month, reallyinformation into a spreadsheet
and we can upload that toNetStock and we've got the
information to run theforecasting engine.
The only things that you'd bemissing there are things like

(52:41):
your purchase orders, historicalpurchase orders for the for the
um supply performance, uhcalculations and things like
that.
But we could start off withjust um sales information out of
a, out of a spreadsheet no,that's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
So you can add additional historical
information for, especially fornew items, maybe it's substitute
or maybe a variant that's nolonger available, because one of
the common things that I seetoo are when someone implements
or migrate to business central,they have different item numbers
for different colors, when inreality in business central

(53:17):
those are sort of variants orversions of the same product.
So it sounds like you're ableto calculate those as well, or
at least combine them.
So, which kind of leads me tomy next question.
So how long does it take for anorganization to fully trust the
application that's going toforecast for you, so that people

(53:37):
like Sam can go on vacationright, be sitting at the beach
and say, yeah, it's going toforecast for you, so that people
like Sam can go on vacationright, be sitting on the beach
and say, ah, it's going to work,I trust that it's forecasting
properly, I have orders comingin.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
Sam, did you do anything while you were on the
beach?
Did you log into NetStock?

Speaker 3 (53:54):
I did not do a single thing.
I had my phone in my car mostof the time.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
I told her not to check Slack while she was on
holiday on the beach.
I did.
Yeah, it's a bit of a how long.
You know we speak aboutimplementations.
On average, we'd say probablylike 14 to 16 weeks, you know,
maybe a couple hours a week toget there, so it's not like a

(54:21):
full-time job.
You could do it really quickly.
We've had, you know, people getinto it and small businesses
that we're really eager to goand, you know, do it in like a
month.
But it really depends again onthings like data, the people
that you're working with and howwell they can adapt to change

(54:43):
and how eager they are toembrace technology to kind of
fix the things or do the thingsthat they were doing manually.
But yeah, that's kind of likeour average is around 12 to 16
weeks.
Of course, it's an ongoing thing.
We've got a learning academybuilt into the application,

(55:04):
because one of the things thatwe wanted to do with, as I said
with NetStock when we startedwith those small businesses, is
we wanted to educate them oninventory methodology
methodology, right.
So built into the application,apart from having tutorial

(55:25):
videos and blogs and, and youknow, tours and things in the
application, and also we've gotin-app support through a chat.
There's the learning paths thatyou can go on to understand
more about inventory planningand you can even certify as a
net stock inventory specialistthrough our learning academy.
So it's really about ongoing.

(55:47):
We want our customers to getbetter and better at what they
do.
We're one of those businesseswhere we're quite lucky because
the ROI is in your face everysingle day.
Every single day, we're tellingyou where your inventory is,
how much of it is tied up, howmuch of your cash is tied up,
what your service levels are,where you're stocking out, where
you're holding too much excess.

(56:08):
Every single day.
So if you see an improvement onthose dashboards, you can see
straight away what the ROI is.
So it's kind of in your faceand we want people to get better
and better and improve theirinventory planning, you know, so
that they can they sort ofbecome.
We want those spreadsheetslaves to kind of become the
heroes of inventory managementin their business.

(56:29):
You know, by using the toolrather than you know the
spreadsheet that they've beenworking on for you know so many
years and kind of trust.
Um, you know so I wouldn't sayblindly, but but have so much
faith and and trust that rightand that, yeah, we try to
achieve a lot of people don'trealize that.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
uh, especially for organizations where they have
high volume of inventory or highmoving inventory, where a lot
of their cash really is held upin inventory, and so if they
don't get a handle of that, thatbecomes detrimental, because
all it takes is for one badseason.
Now you have all this inventorysitting there not knowing what

(57:11):
to do with it.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
So we actually we did and we've been looking at ways
that we because we have we'vegot about 2,500 customers
worldwide.
There's always been thisdiscussion about what could we
do with.
You know, we have a lot of datafrom small, medium-sized
businesses and what can we dowith this data to help our
customers or gain insights on,you know what they're doing and

(57:37):
how they should be doing it.
So last year, for the firsttime and we're gonna be doing
this every year we released abenchmark report where we went
and anonymized all theinformation.
We did some interviews with,like, I think, 300 customers, a
whole bunch of information thatcame out in that benchmark
report.
One of the things that came outin that was that around was it

(58:01):
38, I stand corrected I think itwas 38% of small, medium-sized
business.
38% of their inventory wasexcess.
If you think that you could Alot of cash, yeah, you could
take that's a lot of cash,that's a lot.
And the bigger the business hasgot, the worse it got, so at
the more kind of like, uh,enterprise levels, it was as

(58:25):
much as 42 percent, right, andif you think about the cost of
cash now, which never used to bean issue, but now it's a pretty
big issue, right?
Um, and warehouse space, labor,all all of the costs that go
into holding too much inventory.
It's a big problem.
Even though they've been betterat and we've seen that they've

(58:45):
actually been better at managinginventory and managing the
demand side of things, there'sstill 38% excess.
Now that alone, if we couldtake 10% out of that 38%, if we
take 10% of your that 30%, 38%,right, if we take 10% of your
inventory and reduce yourinventory by 10%, I mean you'd
be the hero of your business forsure, like your financial

(59:07):
director would just absolutelylove you, right?
And that's kind of what we'retrying to do.
We're trying to get thoseplanners to be able to do those
type of things in their business, really make a difference,
really.
Because, you know, we were asmall, we were a tech startup,
we were a small and medium-sizedbusiness.
We understood those businesses.
We were also all trying to doeverything we could with very

(59:29):
limited resources, right, andyou know, look where we've gone,
you know, and we want to beable to support those small,
medium-sized businesses to dothat as well.
And how are they going to grow?
They're going to grow andinventory is the biggest thing
in an inventory business.
Right, that is your like.
They say it's either your assetor or uh, it's a liability and

(59:51):
depending on how you manage itright.
So is it an asset or is it aliability, but it is the biggest
, biggest part of your business.
You need to, you need to manageit right.
So is it an asset, or is it aliability, but it is the biggest
part of your business.
You need to manage it as wellas you possibly can.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
That's important.
The cost of inventory sittingon the shelf is expensive and
it's not only because of thecost of the product, but it's
also the shelf space.
A lot of individuals don'trealize that, if you can again,
as everyone had alluded to ormentioned forecasting is not
100%.
If forecasting it's not, evenjust with inventory forecasting
anything Chris talked about theweather you can forecast

(01:00:24):
anything that's not accurate.
It can't be 100% accuratebecause there's always external
view, which is important to takeinto consideration as well as

(01:00:46):
having dead inventory orinventory that's not turning.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
That's extremely important.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Sam, how do you market all of that?
How do you convince your newbuyers of why they need as young
entrepreneurs they're runningbusinesses to use an application
like this where you know well,you know, you know how that goes
right.
They could research themselveslike I can use this tool yep,
yep, I think it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
So I actually don't sit on the marketing team.
A lot of people don't realizethat it's new for me.
I sit under, so we have a wholemarketing team that focuses on
most of those challenges.
But I think that the sweet spotfor me is making sure that most
of our content out in the etheris very self-service driven and

(01:01:35):
very like millennial, focusedand ready, because we're seeing
a big shift in our target buyer,just like everybody, where our
buying committee is becomingyounger and younger and we have
less of those people that areI've been doing this 20 years
and it's in my head.
Therefore, I'm good you havethis like new, young blood

(01:01:55):
coming in and saying I don'twant to spend my vacation
looking at my demand plan, so Ineed a tool like this so that my
life is easier, right?
So those are the conversationswe're starting to have on, like
how do we shift our go to marketfor that more driven focus and
less of the?
We've been on GP for, you know,30 years and now we're looking

(01:02:18):
to move to business central, butBob doesn't want to change his
mind about his spreadsheetbecause he's going to retire on
the spreadsheet.
Right, he's ready to retire ina year.
He's just buying time, butyou're getting that new person
come in, regardless of age,regardless of whatever, with
that change management spirit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
So we're seeing a lot of that shift, which is the
highlight of my marketing careerfor sure it's a big shift and
it's important to realize that,generationally, the generation
that grew up with the cellphones, that grew up with the
internet, that grew up with thesearching, is now the ones that
are primarily making decisions.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
I say primarily there's different businesses at
different stages.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Every business is different.
So it is a challenge not toturn it into marketing from a
marketing point of view.
To go back to Bob, like yousaid, who has that spreadsheet,
who is like me, who remembersthe cell phone being invented,
who remembers the Netscape andInternet Explorer war of a
browser where everybody elsejust grows up?
And now, well, now, if childrenare being born and they come

(01:03:25):
out with cell phones in theirhands, so it's, it's a big
change and a big shift.
Look at the challenges of notprogressing with the technology
and how they may be holdingthemselves back because they're
afraid or they don't know ordon't understand and may not

(01:03:46):
trust.
I think you said who'd you sayBob?

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Bob, I named you Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
I don't know who you said but all the Bobs in the
world listening to this rightnow, they probably like that's
me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
I'm gonna retire my spreadsheet.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
I've been in businesses before where we're so
focused on talking aboutbringing the person from gp into
the bc world, and I think theshift that I'm really focused on
and something we're doing atnetstock is we're actually not
really trying to sell to.
Focused on and something we'redoing at NetStock is we're

(01:04:18):
actually not really trying tosell to that person right now.
We're happy if they come to us,but that sales cycle is a lot
harder than someone who iscoming in trying to make change
in their business as a newcomer.
Right, that, likeentrepreneurial spirit that
Vaughn talked about with kind ofour culture, plays into how we
sell as well.
We're looking for the similarspirit in our customer profile

(01:04:42):
as we are ourselves.
Right, I'm like it's a loteasier to sell optimization and
forecasting and that you know,trust the system and train the
system to someone who's readyfor that instead of someone
who's like I like my basic stuff, I like it the way it is.
This is easy, right?

(01:05:04):
So that's what I see from ashift for us.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
I have a saying for that as well, because those
sales are difficult and they'rechallenging and your probability
of success go down.
But I say to everybody,sometimes no business is better
than bad business.
Agreed, Because that issomething that I learned very
early on in my career thatsometimes walking away from

(01:05:28):
those types of deals now thatwe're shifting from I don't mean
to shift from the demandplanning point of view, but it's
important to realize thatsometimes walking away from a
deal or a transaction, itdoesn't even have to be ERP
implementation, it can beanything.
It could be cutting someone'slawn, for example.
If it's a challenging task or achallenging deal, it's better

(01:05:49):
to walk away than have it gosour or have issues or
contention issues or challenges,Because the other thing that
follows up with that a happycustomer tells one person, an
unhappy customer tells 10.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
The internet.
They tell the internet.
Yes, that's a good one.
All of the self-service peoplelike me Listen.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
I heard that saying, or I had that saying, long
before the internet, by the way.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
This was back when.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
Young Brad started out when we used to literally
have to put stuff on a cd.
I'm not even going to tell youI'm dating.
We used to use floppy disks.
I remember when we used toinstall the vision on a floppy
disk wow, so but it's, it goesit goes to the point that, like

(01:06:35):
you just said, sam, it's that'swhere I take all that into
consideration, because happypeople just are happy, and
miserable people want everyoneelse to hear and share their
misery, so everyone should alsotake that into consideration
when they see some of this stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:06:51):
I just want to say that that version that you
installed with the floppy disk,we probably don't support that
version, unless you have thespiritual datapy disk.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
We probably don't support that version, unless you
have the critical data in therethat we could control.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
I'm almost certain the data has changed since then,
If somebody's still runningthat you probably don't want to
work with them anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Yeah, you don't want to be in business.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
They're not on our list of target.
That's definitely not, actually, which leads me to a question
that Brad had mentioned about inbusiness.
They're not on our list oftarget.
That's definitely not.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Definitely not, actually, which leads me to a
question that Brad had mentionedabout, you know, happy and
unhappy in users that are usingthe product where you're
providing them.
Here's the forecast, here'swhat we think it's going to.
What you need for yourinventory.
You should start ordering theseto make it on time or to get

(01:07:39):
here on time.
Do you find and I don't know ifyou have this data do you find
that people tend to make changesto what you've given them?
Like what is the percentage ofusers changing the data because
they I don't trust it.
I'm going to change it.
Maybe a couple here.
There's a few percentage hereversus we're like don't trust it
, I'm going to change it.
Maybe a couple here.
There's a few percentage hereversus we're like I trust it.

(01:08:02):
I'm just going to go ahead andrelease those purchase orders.

Speaker 4 (01:08:06):
Yeah, so we, we track that in the application as well
.
Just to make it worse, on ourexecutive dashboard the
executives can see, you know,how many orders are being placed
.
So for us those are markers ofsuccess with implementation,
with the customer.
If they're downloading ourrecommended orders as they are
and making very few changes tothose recommended orders, then

(01:08:29):
we know that that's successful.
If we see that they stopdownloading orders, which means
they're creating ordersthemselves in the ERP or they're
changing orders quite a lotbefore they send it through to
the ERP, then there's a problem.
You know, we always say thereare three things.
It's not the order that needsto be changed, it's either the

(01:08:51):
forecast or the policies or thedata.
Right, and if those things aremanaged properly, properly, then
you're going to get a reallygood recommended order.
Right, because we're going totake everything into
consideration and calculate.
That's what we do.
Right, we calculate an optimalorder.
But if those three thingsaren't in place, like if we're
not managing, so you know we'relooking with all those risk

(01:09:14):
calculations and everything.
We're still also on thedashboards bringing up all the
top over and under forecastitems, you know, so that they
can see those things and say youknow, is there something that
can you intervene?
Is there something that youknow about this item or about
the market that we cannot seewith all the information that we
have?
And can you intervene?
Right these exception listseverywhere in the application,

(01:09:36):
because we're always trying to,again with these small and
medium-sized businesses, tryingto make them as effective as
possible in as little time aspossible, right?
So where are the top problemsthat you need to deal with with
your forecast?
You know, make sure yourpolicies are set up and we've
got a data purity dashboard thattells you, you know, these
items aren't connected to asupplier, these purchase orders

(01:09:56):
are overdue from two years ago,or sales orders are overdue from
two years ago.
Clean the data.
So we're constantly looking atthose things and if you manage
those things, it's just acalculator in the end.
Right, it's going to take allof that information and it's
going to spit out an answer,like a calculator does.
But if the inputs aren't rightand the settings aren't right,

(01:10:18):
it's not going to give you asaccurate an answer, and that's
really what you have to manage.
But you know, again, this isthe process of teaching people
to trust the application.
The nice thing about it is.
You know it's so visual thatyou could go down step by step
and see every single part of thecalculation and how we got
there and why it's doing thisand you this.
So it starts becoming so easyto interact with the application

(01:10:40):
.
If there's something that'swrong on the purchase order, go
into the item and have a look atthat item.
We've now got AI capabilitythat actually when you go into
the item you hit analyze andit'll give you a whole breakdown
of that item.
It'll basically analyze thatitem and come back and say to
you this item is overstocked.
You have two purchase orders onthe way that's going to

(01:11:04):
increase that overstock.
Can you cancel those orders?
Or this item is going to stockout in two weeks' time.
You've got a delivery due forthree weeks.
So you've got a week thatyou're potentially going to be
out of stock and because of thatyou might lose X amount of
sales.
This is a really important itemin your business so you might

(01:11:24):
want to expedite the order oreven buy from another supplier
source locally to mitigate thatrisk of that stock out right or
the potential stock out in thefuture.
So it gives you the ability tovery quickly get to the problem
areas.
We even have with the AIAssistant and Opportunity Engine

(01:11:45):
, which now goes and looks forthe biggest problems in the
business and then puts them on adashboard for you and says, hey
, these are the 15 biggestproblems we see in your business
today.
Can you, you know, go deal withfive of those biggest problems
we see in your business today?
Can you, you know, go deal withfive of those?
And you know, it's about theseincremental things that we do to
to better the business so thatagain, eventually, your

(01:12:07):
inventory reduces to to whatthat optimal, as close to that
optimal level as possible, andat the same time, we increase
the availability to make sure inthe stock turns, to make sure
that you're turning that cashfaster and that you're servicing
your customers with the itemsthat they actually want to buy
and not tying up your cash initems that are not important to
the business.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
This is why you're the doctor I have one more
question for you.
I don't know if this comes intoplay, but I've worked on
implementations.
I was thinking you're talkingabout the orders.
I've dealt with individualsthat had orders 10, 15 years old
and they tried to use it tomanage customer forecasts.
I've worked with severalimplementations that receive

(01:12:47):
forecasts.
Everyone's talking aboutforecasting here, so we're
forecasting our product, butalso our customers may also have
a forecast that they send to usso that we can.
If it's a manufacturer or asupplier, a wholesaler that's
selling to a retailer, forexample, oftentimes retailers
will send forecasts for theirseasons to make sure that they
have enough inventory so thatthey can sell to their customers
.
Where would the customerforecast reside in the forecast

(01:13:10):
process?
Does it reside in the ERPsystem or is it something that
you would put in NetStock?

Speaker 4 (01:13:14):
We put it in NetStock , so we have tools to
collaborate.
So you know, whether it'scustomers, whether it's product
owners, whether it's salespeoplefor different regions, they're
able to input their forecastsand we're able to plan against

(01:13:34):
that.
So you know, it could bebudgets, it could be anything,
any forecast that you want toimport, and we can have that all
on the same screen and theplanners can then work.
This is where this S&OP kind ofintegrated business planning
and all that type of stuff comesin.
This kind of takes it to thenext level.
Now, where finance is going.
Oh, you know, we need toincrease our top line by X

(01:13:58):
amount or margins or whatever itis, and then input all of this
information, marketinginformation, customer forecasts
that are coming in, and thendecide on a consensus forecast
at the end Based on all of theseforecasts.
This is the final forecast thatwe're deciding on and then let
that then drive the supply planand the inventory optimization

(01:14:23):
from there.
So, yeah, that's really, and,as I said with the IBP product,
there's a demand planningproduct there called Pivot
Forecasting, and that's exactlywhat it does.
There's collaboration, there'sscenario planning, which you
alluded to before and saying youknow if the tariffs hit, you
know, or the port closes and wecan't get items from that port,

(01:14:47):
what other scenarios can webuild just in case?
And then let's action thatscenario if it happens, or we
stick with this plan that wehave right now.
So you can do differentscenarios as well in that
planning application and thenyou know, depending on what you
you know what the situation isor what happens.

(01:15:07):
You can then action differentplans.
We're looking at doing that.
You can do that with the demandplanning, the IBP product, and
we're looking at a digital twinfor the well, I said the low-end
product, but the originalinventory advisor product, the
net stock product that we have.

(01:15:27):
So, yeah, all of those thingswe want to be able to take and
the more information we canbring in for people to do better
demand planning and sales andoperations planning, the better
for us.
We're seeing a big trend withpeople wanting to forecast by
customer and by channel as well.
Like you said, whether it's bigbox retail or whether it's

(01:15:50):
online.
There's different behaviors,different strategies in each of
those and then also differentinputs, depending on whether
customers are giving you uhforecasts or not and, on the
other side, being able to giveyour supplier a forecast right.
Can we plan?
We can predict or plan whatwe're going to be purchasing for

(01:16:10):
the next 12 months.
We can put that into a formatthat that you can then give to
your supplier and say you know,because it's all about that,
then that that collaborationstarts getting really, really
good, because now you'recollaborating with your
customers and you're getting thedemand plan as accurate as
possible.
You know, we always say demandplanning is a process, it's not
just a forecast algorithm.

(01:16:32):
You know and I think that'swhat we've been talking to all
this time Like we're trying toget the forecast as accurate as
possible.
But that's just one step in thedemand plan is getting that
base statistical forecast going.
Now how do we intervene?
How do we plan better againstthat base forecast to get to a
forecast that's right for ourbusiness?
And then that's going to drivethe inventory planning right

(01:16:53):
through to the supplier, wherenow we're planning with the
supplier and we're saying thisis our forecast for the next 12
months of what our offtake isgoing to be from you.
Can we ensure that we have thisstuff on time for these amounts
of items at this time?
And that'll help them withtheir manufacturing and their
planning from their side as well.
So giving a forecast orreceiving a customer forecast is

(01:17:15):
kind of essential to that salesand operations planning process
.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
Sounds like a lot of planning, which kind of leads me
to my next question about youknow for an organization to get
the most out of their businesscentral and you know utilizing
those tools.
What is your advice for acompany or organization that's
ready to jump into bringing in ademand planning tool?

(01:17:42):
What is your advice to getprepared or to start planning?
What should they be doing now,before even getting into the
demand planning?
Because again in the past,sometimes actually, brad alluded
to this where when you have baddata or maybe it was Yvonne you
have bad data and yourforecasting is inaccurate

(01:18:05):
because you're feeding it withthe wrong information and then
you got to go back and thenmassage the data that you got
and then send it out and seewhat comes out.
What's your advice for anorganization about to invest in
a demand planning tool?
What should they do now?

Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
Well, I think data is probably and this is during
that 12 to 14 week process orhowever long it takes like I
said, how long is a piece ofstring?
The biggest part of that isdata right, because for us to be
able to help you understand howthe calculation works and
produce a recommended order thatyou trust, we need to have,

(01:18:44):
like I said, the right data, theright policy settings and the
most accurate forecasting we canget.
So the forecasting engine doesa lot of that kind of heavy
lifting itself.
It even has the ability to dothings like smooth out peaks in
your historical data and umtroughs.
You know, if you were stockedout for 15 days of of the month,

(01:19:06):
there were no sales duringthose 15 days, your forecast is
going to be understated, youknow.
So we need to be able to and wecan.
We can automatically makeadjustments for those things to
get as accurate a forecast.
So I'm quite confident thatwe're getting as accurate a
forecast as we possibly can withthe forecasting engine if you
set it up right and you do allthe rest.

(01:19:28):
The next thing is the policies.
Now the policies.
We're going to sit and discussthat with you and you're going
to decide.
Those policies are usually seton how important the items are.
So we want to invest more initems that are high value, fast
moving items, less in items thatare not, so we can get that
balance of inventory and we'reinvesting in the right items,
which turning the inventoryfaster and we're making more

(01:19:48):
profit right that, and we setpolicies against that.
So once we've sat and done thatand and aligned those policies
with what the business is tryingto achieve, that again those
are those two inputs um to theapplication are now there, what
the business is trying toachieve, that again, those two
inputs to the application arenow there and the calculator is
working right.
And then the last part is thedata right.
And I think that would be thebiggest thing.
And I actually had aconversation with a partner

(01:20:09):
about this and we were talkingabout how do we better prepare a
customer for what's going to berequired from a data point of
view.
Right now we have a data puritydashboard that picks up all the
things that that's qr and thatalso, again, it's one of those
things that are never going tobe 100 we know data is never 100
and I would say to the customergo and clean your data before

(01:20:31):
you input this, this application, but then you'd never see them
again, right.
So we have very specific thingsthat we, that we that we look at
, and I mean there's a whole lotof touch points, but I can tell
you the three most importantthings in that overdue sales
orders, overdue purchase ordersokay, and items connected to a

(01:20:52):
supplier right, because if youhave an overdue purchase order,
we think that there is stockarriving today.
It's overdue from two weeks ago, so we're expecting it and
tomorrow we'll expect it, andtomorrow we'll expect it, unless
that purchase order disappearsor it arrives and we are now

(01:21:12):
stocked and we can carry on withthe planning.
If there's sales orders, we seethat there's firm demand and
we're saying, hey, we've gotthese sales orders that need to
go out to the customer, so weneed to purchase more inventory
because we've got firm demand,right, so we're buying more than
what we need and those thingswill skew what that purchase
order looks like and then, whenthey get to that, we can't

(01:21:32):
really train people to trustthat process if the order is
coming out wrong.
So those are two things thatare really important when it
comes to the way that wecalculate to get to that order.
And the third thing, obviously,is we don't know which supplier
to plan against if you don'thave an item connected to a
supplier.
So I would say off the batthose three things if we could

(01:21:54):
have that as clean as possiblewhen we pull in your data, that
process would go a lot quicker.
And then, from an internal pointof view, from a process point
of view, that's just changemanagement.
And I'm sure you guys deal withthis all the time in ERP,
probably more than what we do,because we're really only
touching one kind of department,which is your purchasing and

(01:22:16):
planning department, because youguys are touching every single
part of that business when youroll out an ERP.
Right, but it's changemanagement.
We're 100% going to take thison.
This is what we want to do inthe business.
And you need buying from theexecs to drive it down and say,
hey guys, this is the tool thatwe invested in this tool, we

(01:22:36):
trust that this is going to work.
Net stock's done a great job onselling to us um and we need to
implement this in the, in theapplication.
And then we need somebody todrive the process, what we call
the net stock champion, which isgoing to be the person that
takes responsibility for thatproject working and then, at a
lower level, the people that weneed to work with, the people
that are on day-to-day basis,are going to interact with the,

(01:22:57):
with the application, and that'sjust.
You know, the usual projectstuff.
It's like we need buy-in, weneed commitment to to get it
done, we need the data as cleanas possible and we need to
engage.
We need people to engage withus and train and learn, but you
know, those are kind of like the, the usual suspects when it
comes to implementations, right?

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Does it forecast?

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
people going on vacation.
Well, people can go on morevacations if they have the
forecast Exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:23:32):
So we used to have this picture of when we first
started with, with a littlepicture of the dashboard on an
iPad.
I remember Barry, who's hisfriend of mine, that was one of
the founders um, he said thatthey came to a a conference I
think it was one of the big sageconferences when they first
started off, way back when, andhe had net stock on an ipad and
nobody even had ipads.
Then, you know, and maybe wewere a little bit ahead of time,

(01:23:54):
we had this picture of an ipadwith a little dashboard on this
person sitting on the beach.
You know, and that was kind oflike.
The selling point is that youknow you could do this from
anywhere anytime.
Of course, that didn't makesense until COVID came around,
but you know, back then it didlook nice that they could sit on
your beach and sit on the beachand do your inventory planning.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
It's still nice in something to do.
Well, vaughn Sam, sam Bush, Iget it.
Ambush, sam Bush.
Sam Bush, you say it fast, Ilike it.
I got it, vaughn Sam.
Thank you for taking the timeto speak with us today.
We really appreciate your timeand sharing all the information
that you shared about NetStock,as well as other things.
If anybody has any additionalquestions or would like more

(01:24:36):
information on NetStock or theywould like to see some of the
other I'm all tongue-tied todaysee some of the other great
things that you do.
What's the best way to get incontact with you, sam?
We'll start with you, sam Bush.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
For me it's LinkedIn.
You can find me Sam Bush orAmbush on Air is my podcast, or
you can email me at sambush atnetstockcom.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Mr Vaughn sir.

Speaker 4 (01:25:02):
Yeah, I would say the same thing.
Reach out to me on LinkedInBecause I'm from the old school.
I don't have my surname, butit's Vaughn.
At netstockco we had too fewpeople in our business to worry
about name and surname.
That's good.
That's how you know you're anOG.

(01:25:23):
I guess the single names.
You're an OG.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
Well, thank you very much again for taking the time
to speak with us and sharing usabout NetStock, and we look
forward to speaking with youagain soon.

Speaker 4 (01:25:32):
Thanks for having us, I really appreciate it All
right, ciao, ciao.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
Thanks guys.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode
of In the Dynamics Corner Chairand thank you to our guests for
participating.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
Thank you, brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlifecom, that is
D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, andyou can interact with them via

(01:26:08):
Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E.
You can also find me atmatalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot
I-O, and my Twitter handle ismatalino16.
And you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
Again, thank you everyone.

(01:26:29):
Thank you and take care.

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