July 22, 2025 • 31 mins
Ever wonder why that item you desperately wanted was out of stock online but sitting unsold on a store shelf across town? The culprit might be hiding in outdated inventory management systems that many retailers still rely on.
Modern retail demands seamless omnichannel experiences, but achieving this requires more than just slick customer-facing apps. Behind every successful retail operation lies sophisticated inventory management technology—the unsung hero determining whether products are available when and where customers want them.
In this enlightening conversation, OnePint.ai CEO Das Pattathil and Chief Business Officer Anshuman Jaiswal reveal how their company is revolutionizing retail operations through AI-powered inventory management. They explain why many growing brands struggle with basic spreadsheet-based systems that worked during startup phases but become major liabilities as operations scale.
The discussion dives into three critical benefits of modern inventory systems: driving top-line growth by preventing stockouts, reducing fulfillment costs through optimized inventory placement, and improving cash flow by minimizing excess inventory. Beyond these tangible benefits, the experts highlight how AI applications in inventory management have evolved from basic forecasting to sophisticated decision-making systems that determine optimal inventory placement and automate critical supply chain decisions.
For retailers considering technology investments, Pattathil and Jaiswal emphasize that inventory management systems represent foundational capabilities that enable all other retail technologies to work effectively. They warn about "the cost of doing nothing"—how delaying these crucial investments creates mounting operational challenges as businesses expand to more channels and markets.
Whether you're running a small B2C brand or managing a mid-sized retail operation, this episode offers valuable insights into how modern inventory technology can transform your business. Listen now to discover why smart inventory solutions powered by AI are no longer optional but essential for retail success.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Digital Front
Door.
I'm Scott Benedict.
You know, for those of us thatgrew up in retail merchandising,
the term inventory managementsystems, or IMS, refers to a
series of software solutionsthat manage inventory visibility
, forecasting, replenishment andthe optimization of inventory
(00:29):
across business channels.
Now these systems are wonderfulin that they improve a lot of
processes, improve efficiencyand they enhance the overall
merchandise management processby centralizing inventory data,
supporting planning andforecasting decisions and
automate a number of criticaltasks for both a retailer and a
(00:52):
consumer brand.
Now, as many retailers startedand then grew their e-commerce
businesses, separate anddisjointed systems managed
inventory for online sales andfulfillment of those orders from
those systems which managed aretailer's brick-and-mortar
store fleet systems proved to bea real roadblock for retailers
(01:17):
to truly achieve omni-channelintegration and it hindered both
internal teams as well asconsumers have good visibility
to placement of inventory, theavailability of products across
(01:40):
the business.
Now one of the firms that's atthe forefront of innovation in
helping retailers and consumerbrands of all sizes mitigate and
truly migrate to an integrativeway of working and managing
their inventory and their ordersystems is Nextuple, an Anover
(02:02):
Massachusetts-based software andservices firm that helps
retailers and consumer brandscreate and transform
omni-channel order managementsystems in a number of exciting
ways.
Pint AI and they help retailersleverage AI-powered demand
(02:26):
forecasting, planning andinventory optimization
capabilities.
One Pint focuses specificallyon innovating inventory
management systems, a criticalcomponent and an
underappreciated piece of ourbroader retail technology.
Stat and their chief businessofficer, anshman Jaiswal, and
(02:50):
their CEO, Das Patithil, joiningus today in our studio here in
Northwest Arkansas.
And, gentlemen, welcome, we'reso happy to have you both with
us today.
Welcome to Northwest Arkansas.
Thank you, scott.
So, das, let me start with youand maybe can you share with us
a little background about thecompany, both Nextuple broadly
(03:11):
and OnePint specifically, andwhat led the team to form these
companies and then the decisionto add OnePint as a subsidiary
of Nextuple.
Could you give some backgroundon that?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Absolutely.
But first off, thank you, scott, for having us here.
It was a pleasure to meet youin person after such a long time
working together at WalmartIndeed.
And so, yeah, after my days atWalmart, I co-founded the
Nextuple business in 2018.
And we were focused really onmicroservice-based solutions for
(03:49):
retailers and B2B businesses.
What we've realized over theyears is that, while it was very
rewarding to create thesesolutions for the large
retailers, the repeatability ofthe product business was not so
much applicable in that spacethat we were operating in, which
(04:09):
is why we decided that we wantto take a product based approach
to serving mint size retailersand brands at the lower end of
the spectrum, which is why welaunched OnePineai as a
subsidiary of Nextuple.
So I decided to take on therole of the CEO, anshuman took
(04:30):
on the role of the chiefbusiness officer, and we got
started about four months agoAwesome.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So, anshuman, as you work with some of your existing
clients to upgrade theirinventory management systems and
their planning capabilities, Isuspect there's probably some
recurring themes or somerecurring challenges that some
of these firms have when tryingto migrate into more modern ways
of managing forecasting,planning and inventory.
(04:57):
What are some of thoserecurring things that you see
clients are encountering, orsome of the challenges they
encounter?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Scott, I think.
Working with a number of D2Cbrands and midsize retailers,
what I realized was they facethe same set of challenges as
big retailers.
They have the same aspirationsas big retailers in terms of how
do we manage inventoryforecasting, how do we have
right in stock ratios, and so onand so forth, but what they
(05:26):
really struggle with is theydon't have sufficient capital or
they have under-invested intheir inventory systems.
Many of the companies grow veryquickly and they have simply
excels or some homegrown systems, so they struggle with not
having sufficient attention andinvestments in inventory systems
(05:47):
.
Additionally, now, with theadvent of AI AI of the future
they don't have modern tech aswell.
So some of those are, you know,basic challenges that many of
our clients face and we are hereto you, here to solve some of
those challenges, as we providemodern tech stack Great sales.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So to ask, when faced with the challenge of enhancing
their inventory systems,especially in ways that align
with omni-channel orderfulfillment could be orders
going to a store or to an endconsumer what do you recommend
retailers or brands consider interms of evaluating their
(06:34):
current IMS systems versus wherethey need to go to be relevant
and really on top of their gamegoing forward?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I think this is a great question.
When we look at our potentialclient base or ideal customer
profile, what we notice quiteoften is that folks are very
focused on top line growth,which I think is a great
objective to have.
You need to be able to spend,acquire more customers, grow
(07:03):
your top line, and what happensin the process as you scale is
that the complexities increasein your operations and if you
have not invested in systems andprocesses and automation in
that backend, you run intochallenges sooner or later.
You run into challenges, youknow, sooner or later, right.
(07:23):
So I, what we advise our youknow potential clients or
clients to do is to you know,think about your metrics.
Now, what are you seeing interms of you know your cost of
fulfillment right?
Are you keeping your inventoryclose to your customer?
What's your speed at which youcan actually get to your
customer right?
What's your forecastingaccuracy?
(07:44):
Are you able to you knowin-stock rate that you aspire to
have?
Do you have stockouts?
Are you leaving money on thetable because you're not able to
serve customers?
So look at all these metricsand then that will give you the
right sort of impetus to investin solutions like an inventory
(08:06):
management system and alsoinvest in real-time visibility
as much as possible.
As you start selling onmarketplaces, as you start
selling into retailers,wholesale business and D2C, you
want to see what your supply is,what your demand is, what your
availability for the differentchannels are, in real time.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
So that's really what we ask our customers to do
retailers and brands for thatmatter, are having to make
decisions about in what order toinvest in technology, and it
feels like what you'redescribing is foundational.
(08:50):
In other words, it's a basiccapability that then sets up
your future investments oftechnology.
But if you don't have thisaspect of your business solved,
other investments down the roadwon't really be fully optimized.
Is that the right way to?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
think about that, absolutely, absolutely so set up
.
If you don't have good demandforecasting base, how are you
going to do promotion analysis?
How are you going to doplacement inventory, placement
logic?
Some of these things arefoundational that you need to
invest in sooner.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Right, that makes sense, so Anshuman when looking
at upgrades to their existingback office systems.
How do you and the team adviseretailers or brands to assess
the ROI when they're making thedecision to invest in this?
Because I assume CFOs and otherfinancial leaders are a party
(09:49):
to some of these conversations,not just the supply chain or
inventory management leaders.
So there has to be an ROIconversation.
How do you advise companies tokind of think that through?
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah, that's what I think it is always
cross-functional decisioningbetween CFOs and supply chain
heads and technology leads.
In terms of evaluating what isa business case associated with
investing in inventorymanagement systems.
And the way we look at it is,you should look at on three
(10:19):
planks.
The first one is top linebenefits.
The first one is top linebenefits.
What is the new inventorymanagement system if you don't
have AI enabled systems such asOnePineai?
What would it do to your salesor top line?
Would you be able to sell more,whether it is fulfillment cost,
(10:41):
your cost of disappoints ororder cancellations?
And lastly, you would look atcash flow, because inventory is
cash flow.
So how much inventory buildupdo you have?
How much can you shave off fromthe inventory buildup and
release the cash?
You have soft benefits as well,which sometimes not get
(11:04):
measured sufficiently in thebusiness, as you know, which is
around productivity.
A lot of people in supply chainand technology are just
inundated with Excel and a lotof manual work, so we also look
at productivity and leashopportunity.
Can you free up people's timefor them to do more creative,
more complex work and let aninventory management system do
(11:27):
the grunt work, so to say?
Right?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And I think that makes a lot of sense.
And you touched a little bitabout the role of AI and that's
what I was going to ask you.
We hear an awful lot ofconversations about the role for
artificial intelligence, or AI,in modern retail across a
number of aspects of business.
What capabilities, maybe, whatbenefits can a retailer or a
(11:52):
consumer brand expect for AI orfrom AI when it relates to some
of the back office systems, likean inventory management system?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
That's a great question, scott.
So if you look at applicationof AI in retail, there's been a
lot over the past decade or soand in my experience, a lot of
the emphasis on AI applicationswere put into the shopping
experience optimization,personalization, things which
(12:23):
you know got more stickiness forthe customers to come in.
Not so much was done on thebackend, not so much was done on
the supply chain.
Yes, there was last mileoptimization, route optimization
, things like that, which wereprevalent, but not so much into
the rest of the supply chain.
(12:44):
But I think we are at a pointwhere this is a great time,
where I believe there is arevolution of supply chain
systems using AI and the powerof AI.
Where we see opportunities areif you are a mid-sized retailer
or a brand looking to get anaccurate picture of your demand
(13:06):
and forecast your demands, thereare a series of applications,
from time series forecasting toneural networks, that can help
you with that forecasting.
Now AI can even intelligentlyfigure out.
You know for certain categoriesof items what algorithm applies
, yes, and you know for certainother categories something else
(13:28):
applies.
So we know, you know CPG isdifferent from fashion.
If we don't, you know cpg isdifferent from fashion is
different from you know, andjewelry and all that.
So, um, no longer you need tokind of fit your you know
business into a single model.
The system is able to figureout you know, tune, tweak and
actually give you the rightforecasting algorithm.
So that's only one part of it.
(13:48):
Once you have the forecast, youneed to figure out how do I buy
, what's my supplier, lead time,what sort of confidence do I
have in that?
When do I bring it in?
How much do I keep?
Where do I keep it so that whenI have the demand, I am able to
fulfill it with least amount offulfillment cost?
That's another aspect of it.
(14:09):
Now we've only talked about AI,ml, but there is Gen AI, which
is the next frontier where welook at things like
explainability, because one ofthe big things that in my
experience and many of ourexperience, there's a lack of
trust in AI applications becauseit was a black box and it did
(14:30):
not explain things well.
But I think that paradigm ischanging quite a bit, where now
you can actually ask questions,get reasoning and be able to
actually get in-depth analysisof why certain decisions could
have made Right.
That's something that we arestarting to use and see a lot of
applications of.
(14:50):
That's something that we arestarting to use and see a lot of
applications of Other thingsagentic AI, which is now
automating some of the actionswhere a human being had to
previously weigh multipleoptions, consider something,
consider something else and thenfigure out what is the right
decision to make.
Now you can have agents makingthose decisions.
(15:10):
Now, this space is justevolving at this point of time
and now you can probably seeforecasting agents talking to
inventory placement agentstalking to, maybe, pricing
agents and collaborating to makeoptimal decisions for clients.
So I think it's a very excitingspace, you know, and I am super
, you know, super excited to be,you know, operating in this.
You know, this time, with AI.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Well, and I have to tell you both that my
perspective as a former buyer isthat buyers in many cases work
collaboratively with theirinventory management team and
their planners and forecastingteams, and more and more
retailers have that thoseseparate roles within their
merchandising team.
But it felt like in so manycases there was this tendency to
(15:56):
the point that you made earlier, des to keep using legacy
systems that weren't broken andwere good enough, and now it
feels as though table stakesrequire both retailers and
brands to make these investmentsif they're going to keep up,
and that probably the pandemicshowed some holes in their way
(16:20):
of operating that require moresophisticated solutions.
Is that the right way to thinkabout?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
it Absolutely.
I think the pandemic and thesupply chain disruption that
happened afterwards kind ofopened many people's eyes into
and so on.
How do you be more agile inplanning your supply chain,
planning for inventory?
How do you react to exceptionsand some of those things we see
(16:45):
that day in and day out?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Okay, so, in terms of some of the customer facing
aspects of inventory andinventory management, what are
some of the common challengesand I think this is retailer
specific, although brandscertainly play a role in that
and how can the investment and amore advanced, more
sophisticated IMS really makethe customer's experience better
(17:10):
, in addition to obviouslyoptimizing the business benefit
for the retailer?
What does the customer see whenyou do a better job of
leveraging this technology?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I think, scott, that's a good question, because
everything starts, and shouldstart, with customer in mind.
So customers' expectations arecontinuously evolving, as we all
know.
I think the number one needfrom customer standpoint is do I
get reliable experience acrossthe channel that I'm shopping?
(17:40):
I'm shopping at walmartmarketplace, amazon marketplace,
my, you know retailer's website, honest stores, so sort of
providing that reliableexperience really depends on
whether you have unified sourceof truth or inventory that you
can serve all of your inventorychannels right.
So that's number one.
(18:00):
The other aspect is can you helpme deliver accurate promise?
Because when I do shop, Iexpect my, my package to arrive
at certain time, certain time.
Do I get accurate promise fromyou?
So that's the second need.
And the third need would be Iwant personalization of
(18:20):
experiences.
You should have data and youshould know me better than
anybody else and so that you cansell personalized experiences
to me.
So those are the three wayscustomers experience.
Uh, how good or bad of aninventory management system you
have, yeah, and and it iscontinuously shaping and
(18:42):
evolving.
So you have to be at the youknow as brands and retailers.
You have to be at the cuttingedge of the frontier, yeah, um,
to serve your customers as bestas you can.
You know, as you were talkingabout that, one of the things to
serve your customers as best asyou can.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You know, as you were talking about that, one of the
things that occurred to me isit's not just important to have
the right overall inventory, butfor that inventory to be placed
in the right location, and thesignals that a retailer or a
brand get aren't just this iswhat overall demand is, excuse
(19:13):
me, but it's also this location,this store, this fulfillment
center, this delivery uh centerthat's almost as important to
the customer experience thatyou're just talking about as the
as tracking and planning theoverall demand is.
Is that the right way to thinkabout that?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah, no, absolutely, because customer you know which
customer does not wantconvenience and speed.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yes, right, I haven't met one yet.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yes, that's part of the value delivery.
So what inventory do you have?
How much do you have?
Do you have any stockouts?
You know all of those have tobe managed At the same time.
Where do you play so that youcould optimize on speed and cost
equation as well?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Absolutely that introducing any new system or
new technology or new toolrequires the company that has
(20:17):
that technology to train theirassociates to use it and to be
effective, to get the full valueout of that.
In terms of training either newemployees as they come in or
existing employees as theyimplement a new system, what
have you and the team learnedabout maybe some of the best
practices for training eitherthe retailer or the brand's team
(20:39):
to implement a new system?
And is that kind of a one-timeissue or is that training and
optimization of your personnelsomething that happens over time
?
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah.
So, Scott, I think you know weat OnePineai don't treat
technology implementation astechnology implementation.
We treat it as business outcomedelivery mission, Right, so
that's foundational and the waywe think about it is.
Training should not be anafterthought.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Bless you because it hasn't always been my, my
experience and as part of why Iasked that question.
Yeah, is that many cases.
It's the technology.
Here's the keys.
Have a, have a good time withit, and if you don't teach the
team how to use it, you don'tunlock the full value, right?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
yeah, exactly right, exactly right, so right.
So what we essentially do is toembed training from get-go the
user training the decisionmakers, who needs to be trained
as well, because now you aregetting Gen AI as well.
So some of the things thatreally has worked well at
OnePointai is thinking abouttraining as part of the change
(21:50):
management, because people areeither moving off Excel or some
homegrown system or some legacysystems, so they require that
change and support Embeddingtrain-the-trainer mindset as
well, and then now leveragingGen AI, wherein providing
capabilities so that folks canself-learn, get self-trained
(22:11):
based on their device of choicein very human, natural language
ways.
So there are tools andtechniques that we are
constantly evolving and updatingto make sure that training is
as seamless.
But first of all, it startswith mindset.
You've got to embed trainingfrom get-go.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it feels like
when you're considering makingthese investments, not only do
you have to have an ROImentality, but you have to think
about what are all of thedecisions that come with that
investment and the benefit thatultimately you see.
Yeah, please.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
If I can add to that, I think, given that we are
targeting a lot of brands andsmaller companies, it's very
obvious that they don't have toomuch time to support an
implementation and dedicatepeople to onboard a new tool, et
(23:14):
cetera.
So we have consciously investedin quite a bit of
self-onboarding capabilities,meaning you can very easily set
your catalog up, set yournetwork up into the system
through conversational AI.
So that's been a real focus ofOnePintai is that we want to be
(23:35):
as low-touch as possible interms of getting the software
set up and configured, to apoint where you can actually do
it on your own.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
However big you think that is.
I think, from having been thebusiness person who had to use
some of those systems throughoutmy career, I can't emphasize
how big that is because so manysystems have failed because
either the ultimate user didn'tembrace it, it didn't support it
or didn't know how to gain thefull value from it.
(24:07):
Yeah, this piece uh kind of tothe point both of you were
making is so critical becauseyou can't unlock the value if
the team isn't using it to itsfull potential and the team has
to really be brought alongthrough that process and they
have to feel like this actuallymakes their lives easier and
(24:27):
they get the pride of doing abetter job because they've used
a more sophisticated and buteasier to use system.
Is that the right way to thinkabout that?
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, I think that's.
That's how we're thinking aboutit.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think that's how we'rethinking about it.
So the last things I wanted tokind of ask you is that, in my
work as a consultant, one of theconversations we have with a
lot of clients is the cost ofdoing nothing.
In other words, there'sinvestment decisions you have to
make to be a part of modernretail, whether you're a
(25:02):
retailer or a brand, a part ofmodern retail, whether you're a
retailer or a brand, and there'salways the conversation about
well, what if we do nothing andwe don't spend any money?
And so, as some of the clientsyou've encountered either those
that you successfully landed ormaybe those who are still a
little bit on the sidelines whenthey make hard choices about
investing in omni-channelcapabilities what are some of
(25:25):
the examples you have seen ofthe impact of not making an
investment, of doing that donothing or let's not invest now
or let's wait, kind of decisions?
What are some of the impactsthat you may be seeing clients
or potential clients facebecause they chose to do nothing
?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
And I have to say that most of the prospects or
clients that we come across arein that sort of situation, scott
, and what happens is that youprioritize top-line growth, like
I was saying earlier, and someof the investments in
(26:08):
operational optimization andback-end systems is usually an
afterthought, and what the riskthat you know a client is
running to.
I'll take an example of youknow a brand that we're working
with.
You know quite a large.
You know a brand with um fairlylarge customer base, um still
using spreadsheets to manage uhinventory that is being sold um
(26:32):
to on on different channels, um,and one pint is helping them.
You know, create a singlesource of truth for inventory
and you and create that sort ofavailable to promise picture for
different channels.
Similarly, a food brand who'sgot a manufacturing center,
multiple distribution facilitiesand a growing customer base
(26:55):
selling on wholesale into someretailers, again using Google
Sheets to manage entire planningprocess.
So I think it is understandablethat some of these things will
work in the initial stages.
What our recommendation, orwhat our perspective, is that
(27:19):
sooner or later, you need tostart thinking about automating
some of these things, investingin the right tools.
Like you said earlier, thefoundation right.
You got to set thosefoundations because the
complexity is only going toincrease.
You're going to start settingon more channels, and it makes
your life a lot easier if youhave the foundation right and
(27:41):
then you can actually add onfairly easily on top of that.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
If I may add, scott, I think from investment
perspective, one of the thingsthat you know early on, das and
I, you know, decided that youknow we should really focus on
through architectural principles, so that you know the systems
that we build are affordable tomid-market retailers, to brands,
(28:06):
because that's super important.
The other element is around ROIas well, because if you are
operating in Google Sheets andour homegrown systems, you have
a friction to adopt newersystems.
So how do we make it easier andfaster?
So one of the things that wereally promote is time to market
.
How can we quickly implementthe systems?
(28:29):
And you know, and that is partof the investment equation as
well, so we didn't focus onthose two elements so that you
know you can get brands andretailers off the Excel sheets
or homegrown systems, et cetera,adopt modern technology and and
still deliver the ROI that CFOsand business are looking for.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, I think that's a.
That's a great point and agreat way to kind of tie up the
conversation today is the factthat one foundational elements
of your business are so criticalto have a strong underpinning
whether you're a retailer orbrand to set yourself up for
future success.
That convincing senior leadersto invest not only significant
(29:11):
sums of money but developmenthours and time to where the
benefit isn't seen for years,months or weeks is part of how
(29:32):
you get no's or maybe later's,and that really should be yes's.
Let's get going now and let'sget that whole ROI benefit as
quickly as we can.
So fascinating stuff, gentlemen.
(29:55):
Thank you both for joining metoday.
With some core operationalcapabilities.
It's clear that inventorymanagement systems are that
foundational element of abroader transformation of a
retailer or a consumer brand'sback office infrastructure.
From forecasting to stockreplenishment, from distribution
(30:17):
center flow to real-time storeinventory accuracy, a
high-performing inventorymanagement system can really
dramatically influence retailoutcomes, both for the brand,
the retailer and, ultimately,for the consumer.
As retailers navigate whichtechnology bets to make, it
(30:38):
feels like IMS is really a keycornerstone capability, a
foundational capability to builda smarter, faster and more
resilient omni-channel business,and so it feels like this is an
important topic and, gentlemen,thank you both for joining us
today.
Thank you, scott.
Thank you For the Digital FrontDoor.
(30:59):
I'm Scott Benedict.
Thanks for joining us.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Digital Front
Door.
I'm Scott Benedict.
You know, for those of us thatgrew up in retail merchandising,
the term inventory managementsystems, or IMS, refers to a
series of software solutionsthat manage inventory visibility
, forecasting, replenishment andthe optimization of inventory
(00:29):
across business channels.
Now these systems are wonderfulin that they improve a lot of
processes, improve efficiencyand they enhance the overall
merchandise management processby centralizing inventory data,
supporting planning andforecasting decisions and
automate a number of criticaltasks for both a retailer and a
(00:52):
consumer brand.
Now, as many retailers startedand then grew their e-commerce
businesses, separate anddisjointed systems managed
inventory for online sales andfulfillment of those orders from
those systems which managed aretailer's brick-and-mortar
store fleet systems proved to bea real roadblock for retailers
(01:17):
to truly achieve omni-channelintegration and it hindered both
internal teams as well asconsumers have good visibility
to placement of inventory, theavailability of products across
(01:40):
the business.
Now one of the firms that's atthe forefront of innovation in
helping retailers and consumerbrands of all sizes mitigate and
truly migrate to an integrativeway of working and managing
their inventory and their ordersystems is Nextuple, an Anover
(02:02):
Massachusetts-based software andservices firm that helps
retailers and consumer brandscreate and transform
omni-channel order managementsystems in a number of exciting
ways.
Pint AI and they help retailersleverage AI-powered demand
(02:26):
forecasting, planning andinventory optimization
capabilities.
One Pint focuses specificallyon innovating inventory
management systems, a criticalcomponent and an
underappreciated piece of ourbroader retail technology.
Stat and their chief businessofficer, anshman Jaiswal, and
(02:50):
their CEO, Das Patithil, joiningus today in our studio here in
Northwest Arkansas.
And, gentlemen, welcome, we'reso happy to have you both with
us today.
Welcome to Northwest Arkansas.
Thank you, scott.
So, das, let me start with youand maybe can you share with us
a little background about thecompany, both Nextuple broadly
(03:11):
and OnePint specifically, andwhat led the team to form these
companies and then the decisionto add OnePint as a subsidiary
of Nextuple.
Could you give some backgroundon that?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Absolutely.
But first off, thank you, scott, for having us here.
It was a pleasure to meet youin person after such a long time
working together at WalmartIndeed.
And so, yeah, after my days atWalmart, I co-founded the
Nextuple business in 2018.
And we were focused really onmicroservice-based solutions for
(03:49):
retailers and B2B businesses.
What we've realized over theyears is that, while it was very
rewarding to create thesesolutions for the large
retailers, the repeatability ofthe product business was not so
much applicable in that spacethat we were operating in, which
(04:09):
is why we decided that we wantto take a product based approach
to serving mint size retailersand brands at the lower end of
the spectrum, which is why welaunched OnePineai as a
subsidiary of Nextuple.
So I decided to take on therole of the CEO, anshuman took
(04:30):
on the role of the chiefbusiness officer, and we got
started about four months agoAwesome.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So, anshuman, as you work with some of your existing
clients to upgrade theirinventory management systems and
their planning capabilities, Isuspect there's probably some
recurring themes or somerecurring challenges that some
of these firms have when tryingto migrate into more modern ways
of managing forecasting,planning and inventory.
(04:57):
What are some of thoserecurring things that you see
clients are encountering, orsome of the challenges they
encounter?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Scott, I think.
Working with a number of D2Cbrands and midsize retailers,
what I realized was they facethe same set of challenges as
big retailers.
They have the same aspirationsas big retailers in terms of how
do we manage inventoryforecasting, how do we have
right in stock ratios, and so onand so forth, but what they
(05:26):
really struggle with is theydon't have sufficient capital or
they have under-invested intheir inventory systems.
Many of the companies grow veryquickly and they have simply
excels or some homegrown systems, so they struggle with not
having sufficient attention andinvestments in inventory systems
(05:47):
.
Additionally, now, with theadvent of AI AI of the future
they don't have modern tech aswell.
So some of those are, you know,basic challenges that many of
our clients face and we are hereto you, here to solve some of
those challenges, as we providemodern tech stack Great sales.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So to ask, when faced with the challenge of enhancing
their inventory systems,especially in ways that align
with omni-channel orderfulfillment could be orders
going to a store or to an endconsumer what do you recommend
retailers or brands consider interms of evaluating their
(06:34):
current IMS systems versus wherethey need to go to be relevant
and really on top of their gamegoing forward?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I think this is a great question.
When we look at our potentialclient base or ideal customer
profile, what we notice quiteoften is that folks are very
focused on top line growth,which I think is a great
objective to have.
You need to be able to spend,acquire more customers, grow
(07:03):
your top line, and what happensin the process as you scale is
that the complexities increasein your operations and if you
have not invested in systems andprocesses and automation in
that backend, you run intochallenges sooner or later.
You run into challenges, youknow, sooner or later, right.
(07:23):
So I, what we advise our youknow potential clients or
clients to do is to you know,think about your metrics.
Now, what are you seeing interms of you know your cost of
fulfillment right?
Are you keeping your inventoryclose to your customer?
What's your speed at which youcan actually get to your
customer right?
What's your forecastingaccuracy?
(07:44):
Are you able to you knowin-stock rate that you aspire to
have?
Do you have stockouts?
Are you leaving money on thetable because you're not able to
serve customers?
So look at all these metricsand then that will give you the
right sort of impetus to investin solutions like an inventory
(08:06):
management system and alsoinvest in real-time visibility
as much as possible.
As you start selling onmarketplaces, as you start
selling into retailers,wholesale business and D2C, you
want to see what your supply is,what your demand is, what your
availability for the differentchannels are, in real time.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
So that's really what we ask our customers to do
retailers and brands for thatmatter, are having to make
decisions about in what order toinvest in technology, and it
feels like what you'redescribing is foundational.
(08:50):
In other words, it's a basiccapability that then sets up
your future investments oftechnology.
But if you don't have thisaspect of your business solved,
other investments down the roadwon't really be fully optimized.
Is that the right way to?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
think about that, absolutely, absolutely so set up
.
If you don't have good demandforecasting base, how are you
going to do promotion analysis?
How are you going to doplacement inventory, placement
logic?
Some of these things arefoundational that you need to
invest in sooner.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Right, that makes sense, so Anshuman when looking
at upgrades to their existingback office systems.
How do you and the team adviseretailers or brands to assess
the ROI when they're making thedecision to invest in this?
Because I assume CFOs and otherfinancial leaders are a party
(09:49):
to some of these conversations,not just the supply chain or
inventory management leaders.
So there has to be an ROIconversation.
How do you advise companies tokind of think that through?
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah, that's what I think it is always
cross-functional decisioningbetween CFOs and supply chain
heads and technology leads.
In terms of evaluating what isa business case associated with
investing in inventorymanagement systems.
And the way we look at it is,you should look at on three
(10:19):
planks.
The first one is top linebenefits.
The first one is top linebenefits.
What is the new inventorymanagement system if you don't
have AI enabled systems such asOnePineai?
What would it do to your salesor top line?
Would you be able to sell more,whether it is fulfillment cost,
(10:41):
your cost of disappoints ororder cancellations?
And lastly, you would look atcash flow, because inventory is
cash flow.
So how much inventory buildupdo you have?
How much can you shave off fromthe inventory buildup and
release the cash?
You have soft benefits as well,which sometimes not get
(11:04):
measured sufficiently in thebusiness, as you know, which is
around productivity.
A lot of people in supply chainand technology are just
inundated with Excel and a lotof manual work, so we also look
at productivity and leashopportunity.
Can you free up people's timefor them to do more creative,
more complex work and let aninventory management system do
(11:27):
the grunt work, so to say?
Right?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And I think that makes a lot of sense.
And you touched a little bitabout the role of AI and that's
what I was going to ask you.
We hear an awful lot ofconversations about the role for
artificial intelligence, or AI,in modern retail across a
number of aspects of business.
What capabilities, maybe, whatbenefits can a retailer or a
(11:52):
consumer brand expect for AI orfrom AI when it relates to some
of the back office systems, likean inventory management system?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
That's a great question, scott.
So if you look at applicationof AI in retail, there's been a
lot over the past decade or soand in my experience, a lot of
the emphasis on AI applicationswere put into the shopping
experience optimization,personalization, things which
(12:23):
you know got more stickiness forthe customers to come in.
Not so much was done on thebackend, not so much was done on
the supply chain.
Yes, there was last mileoptimization, route optimization
, things like that, which wereprevalent, but not so much into
the rest of the supply chain.
(12:44):
But I think we are at a pointwhere this is a great time,
where I believe there is arevolution of supply chain
systems using AI and the powerof AI.
Where we see opportunities areif you are a mid-sized retailer
or a brand looking to get anaccurate picture of your demand
(13:06):
and forecast your demands, thereare a series of applications,
from time series forecasting toneural networks, that can help
you with that forecasting.
Now AI can even intelligentlyfigure out.
You know for certain categoriesof items what algorithm applies
, yes, and you know for certainother categories something else
(13:28):
applies.
So we know, you know CPG isdifferent from fashion.
If we don't, you know cpg isdifferent from fashion is
different from you know, andjewelry and all that.
So, um, no longer you need tokind of fit your you know
business into a single model.
The system is able to figureout you know, tune, tweak and
actually give you the rightforecasting algorithm.
So that's only one part of it.
(13:48):
Once you have the forecast, youneed to figure out how do I buy
, what's my supplier, lead time,what sort of confidence do I
have in that?
When do I bring it in?
How much do I keep?
Where do I keep it so that whenI have the demand, I am able to
fulfill it with least amount offulfillment cost?
That's another aspect of it.
(14:09):
Now we've only talked about AI,ml, but there is Gen AI, which
is the next frontier where welook at things like
explainability, because one ofthe big things that in my
experience and many of ourexperience, there's a lack of
trust in AI applications becauseit was a black box and it did
(14:30):
not explain things well.
But I think that paradigm ischanging quite a bit, where now
you can actually ask questions,get reasoning and be able to
actually get in-depth analysisof why certain decisions could
have made Right.
That's something that we arestarting to use and see a lot of
applications of.
(14:50):
That's something that we arestarting to use and see a lot of
applications of Other thingsagentic AI, which is now
automating some of the actionswhere a human being had to
previously weigh multipleoptions, consider something,
consider something else and thenfigure out what is the right
decision to make.
Now you can have agents makingthose decisions.
(15:10):
Now, this space is justevolving at this point of time
and now you can probably seeforecasting agents talking to
inventory placement agentstalking to, maybe, pricing
agents and collaborating to makeoptimal decisions for clients.
So I think it's a very excitingspace, you know, and I am super
, you know, super excited to be,you know, operating in this.
You know, this time, with AI.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Well, and I have to tell you both that my
perspective as a former buyer isthat buyers in many cases work
collaboratively with theirinventory management team and
their planners and forecastingteams, and more and more
retailers have that thoseseparate roles within their
merchandising team.
But it felt like in so manycases there was this tendency to
(15:56):
the point that you made earlier, des to keep using legacy
systems that weren't broken andwere good enough, and now it
feels as though table stakesrequire both retailers and
brands to make these investmentsif they're going to keep up,
and that probably the pandemicshowed some holes in their way
(16:20):
of operating that require moresophisticated solutions.
Is that the right way to thinkabout?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
it Absolutely.
I think the pandemic and thesupply chain disruption that
happened afterwards kind ofopened many people's eyes into
and so on.
How do you be more agile inplanning your supply chain,
planning for inventory?
How do you react to exceptionsand some of those things we see
(16:45):
that day in and day out?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Okay, so, in terms of some of the customer facing
aspects of inventory andinventory management, what are
some of the common challengesand I think this is retailer
specific, although brandscertainly play a role in that
and how can the investment and amore advanced, more
sophisticated IMS really makethe customer's experience better
(17:10):
, in addition to obviouslyoptimizing the business benefit
for the retailer?
What does the customer see whenyou do a better job of
leveraging this technology?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I think, scott, that's a good question, because
everything starts, and shouldstart, with customer in mind.
So customers' expectations arecontinuously evolving, as we all
know.
I think the number one needfrom customer standpoint is do I
get reliable experience acrossthe channel that I'm shopping?
(17:40):
I'm shopping at walmartmarketplace, amazon marketplace,
my, you know retailer's website, honest stores, so sort of
providing that reliableexperience really depends on
whether you have unified sourceof truth or inventory that you
can serve all of your inventorychannels right.
So that's number one.
(18:00):
The other aspect is can you helpme deliver accurate promise?
Because when I do shop, Iexpect my, my package to arrive
at certain time, certain time.
Do I get accurate promise fromyou?
So that's the second need.
And the third need would be Iwant personalization of
(18:20):
experiences.
You should have data and youshould know me better than
anybody else and so that you cansell personalized experiences
to me.
So those are the three wayscustomers experience.
Uh, how good or bad of aninventory management system you
have, yeah, and and it iscontinuously shaping and
(18:42):
evolving.
So you have to be at the youknow as brands and retailers.
You have to be at the cuttingedge of the frontier, yeah, um,
to serve your customers as bestas you can.
You know, as you were talkingabout that, one of the things to
serve your customers as best asyou can.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You know, as you were talking about that, one of the
things that occurred to me isit's not just important to have
the right overall inventory, butfor that inventory to be placed
in the right location, and thesignals that a retailer or a
brand get aren't just this iswhat overall demand is, excuse
(19:13):
me, but it's also this location,this store, this fulfillment
center, this delivery uh centerthat's almost as important to
the customer experience thatyou're just talking about as the
as tracking and planning theoverall demand is.
Is that the right way to thinkabout that?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah, no, absolutely, because customer you know which
customer does not wantconvenience and speed.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yes, right, I haven't met one yet.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yes, that's part of the value delivery.
So what inventory do you have?
How much do you have?
Do you have any stockouts?
You know all of those have tobe managed At the same time.
Where do you play so that youcould optimize on speed and cost
equation as well?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Absolutely that introducing any new system or
new technology or new toolrequires the company that has
(20:17):
that technology to train theirassociates to use it and to be
effective, to get the full valueout of that.
In terms of training either newemployees as they come in or
existing employees as theyimplement a new system, what
have you and the team learnedabout maybe some of the best
practices for training eitherthe retailer or the brand's team
(20:39):
to implement a new system?
And is that kind of a one-timeissue or is that training and
optimization of your personnelsomething that happens over time
?
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah.
So, Scott, I think you know weat OnePineai don't treat
technology implementation astechnology implementation.
We treat it as business outcomedelivery mission, Right, so
that's foundational and the waywe think about it is.
Training should not be anafterthought.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Bless you because it hasn't always been my, my
experience and as part of why Iasked that question.
Yeah, is that many cases.
It's the technology.
Here's the keys.
Have a, have a good time withit, and if you don't teach the
team how to use it, you don'tunlock the full value, right?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
yeah, exactly right, exactly right, so right.
So what we essentially do is toembed training from get-go the
user training the decisionmakers, who needs to be trained
as well, because now you aregetting Gen AI as well.
So some of the things thatreally has worked well at
OnePointai is thinking abouttraining as part of the change
(21:50):
management, because people areeither moving off Excel or some
homegrown system or some legacysystems, so they require that
change and support Embeddingtrain-the-trainer mindset as
well, and then now leveragingGen AI, wherein providing
capabilities so that folks canself-learn, get self-trained
(22:11):
based on their device of choicein very human, natural language
ways.
So there are tools andtechniques that we are
constantly evolving and updatingto make sure that training is
as seamless.
But first of all, it startswith mindset.
You've got to embed trainingfrom get-go.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it feels like
when you're considering makingthese investments, not only do
you have to have an ROImentality, but you have to think
about what are all of thedecisions that come with that
investment and the benefit thatultimately you see.
Yeah, please.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
If I can add to that, I think, given that we are
targeting a lot of brands andsmaller companies, it's very
obvious that they don't have toomuch time to support an
implementation and dedicatepeople to onboard a new tool, et
(23:14):
cetera.
So we have consciously investedin quite a bit of
self-onboarding capabilities,meaning you can very easily set
your catalog up, set yournetwork up into the system
through conversational AI.
So that's been a real focus ofOnePintai is that we want to be
(23:35):
as low-touch as possible interms of getting the software
set up and configured, to apoint where you can actually do
it on your own.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
However big you think that is.
I think, from having been thebusiness person who had to use
some of those systems throughoutmy career, I can't emphasize
how big that is because so manysystems have failed because
either the ultimate user didn'tembrace it, it didn't support it
or didn't know how to gain thefull value from it.
(24:07):
Yeah, this piece uh kind of tothe point both of you were
making is so critical becauseyou can't unlock the value if
the team isn't using it to itsfull potential and the team has
to really be brought alongthrough that process and they
have to feel like this actuallymakes their lives easier and
(24:27):
they get the pride of doing abetter job because they've used
a more sophisticated and buteasier to use system.
Is that the right way to thinkabout that?
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, I think that's.
That's how we're thinking aboutit.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think that's how we'rethinking about it.
So the last things I wanted tokind of ask you is that, in my
work as a consultant, one of theconversations we have with a
lot of clients is the cost ofdoing nothing.
In other words, there'sinvestment decisions you have to
make to be a part of modernretail, whether you're a
(25:02):
retailer or a brand, a part ofmodern retail, whether you're a
retailer or a brand, and there'salways the conversation about
well, what if we do nothing andwe don't spend any money?
And so, as some of the clientsyou've encountered either those
that you successfully landed ormaybe those who are still a
little bit on the sidelines whenthey make hard choices about
investing in omni-channelcapabilities what are some of
(25:25):
the examples you have seen ofthe impact of not making an
investment, of doing that donothing or let's not invest now
or let's wait, kind of decisions?
What are some of the impactsthat you may be seeing clients
or potential clients facebecause they chose to do nothing
?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
And I have to say that most of the prospects or
clients that we come across arein that sort of situation, scott
, and what happens is that youprioritize top-line growth, like
I was saying earlier, and someof the investments in
(26:08):
operational optimization andback-end systems is usually an
afterthought, and what the riskthat you know a client is
running to.
I'll take an example of youknow a brand that we're working
with.
You know quite a large.
You know a brand with um fairlylarge customer base, um still
using spreadsheets to manage uhinventory that is being sold um
(26:32):
to on on different channels, um,and one pint is helping them.
You know, create a singlesource of truth for inventory
and you and create that sort ofavailable to promise picture for
different channels.
Similarly, a food brand who'sgot a manufacturing center,
multiple distribution facilitiesand a growing customer base
(26:55):
selling on wholesale into someretailers, again using Google
Sheets to manage entire planningprocess.
So I think it is understandablethat some of these things will
work in the initial stages.
What our recommendation, orwhat our perspective, is that
(27:19):
sooner or later, you need tostart thinking about automating
some of these things, investingin the right tools.
Like you said earlier, thefoundation right.
You got to set thosefoundations because the
complexity is only going toincrease.
You're going to start settingon more channels, and it makes
your life a lot easier if youhave the foundation right and
(27:41):
then you can actually add onfairly easily on top of that.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
If I may add, scott, I think from investment
perspective, one of the thingsthat you know early on, das and
I, you know, decided that youknow we should really focus on
through architectural principles, so that you know the systems
that we build are affordable tomid-market retailers, to brands,
(28:06):
because that's super important.
The other element is around ROIas well, because if you are
operating in Google Sheets andour homegrown systems, you have
a friction to adopt newersystems.
So how do we make it easier andfaster?
So one of the things that wereally promote is time to market
.
How can we quickly implementthe systems?
(28:29):
And you know, and that is partof the investment equation as
well, so we didn't focus onthose two elements so that you
know you can get brands andretailers off the Excel sheets
or homegrown systems, et cetera,adopt modern technology and and
still deliver the ROI that CFOsand business are looking for.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, I think that's a.
That's a great point and agreat way to kind of tie up the
conversation today is the factthat one foundational elements
of your business are so criticalto have a strong underpinning
whether you're a retailer orbrand to set yourself up for
future success.
That convincing senior leadersto invest not only significant
(29:11):
sums of money but developmenthours and time to where the
benefit isn't seen for years,months or weeks is part of how
(29:32):
you get no's or maybe later's,and that really should be yes's.
Let's get going now and let'sget that whole ROI benefit as
quickly as we can.
So fascinating stuff, gentlemen.
(29:55):
Thank you both for joining metoday.
With some core operationalcapabilities.
It's clear that inventorymanagement systems are that
foundational element of abroader transformation of a
retailer or a consumer brand'sback office infrastructure.
From forecasting to stockreplenishment, from distribution
(30:17):
center flow to real-time storeinventory accuracy, a
high-performing inventorymanagement system can really
dramatically influence retailoutcomes, both for the brand,
the retailer and, ultimately,for the consumer.
As retailers navigate whichtechnology bets to make, it
(30:38):
feels like IMS is really a keycornerstone capability, a
foundational capability to builda smarter, faster and more
resilient omni-channel business,and so it feels like this is an
important topic and, gentlemen,thank you both for joining us
today.
Thank you, scott.
Thank you For the Digital FrontDoor.
(30:59):
I'm Scott Benedict.
Thanks for joining us.
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