“Optiply helps us to avoid unnecessary stock and we experience much more peace of mind in our department. ”

Purchasing can be a challenging profession, especially when you’re dealing with a dynamic market environment and ever-changing customer requirements. Try to achieve your purchasing and inventory objectives with these challenges. Buyers often buy on gut feeling, and as a result, your stock can easily get out of balance. After all, you don’t want to keep too little stock in your warehouse, but you also don’t want too much stock. How do you efficiently achieve the right balance if you want to meet their daily needs for business customers?

Logistiekconcurrent has grabbed the bull by the horns to tackle this challenge. The solution quickly pointed to an inventory optimization software that balances inventory by using the right data. Discover how Logistiekconcurrent solved its purchasing problems by making data-driven choices and how they managed to realize a better product range for more customer satisfaction and better sales.

More automation

More analysis on product offerings through ABC categorization

“Buying on gut feeling resulted in less grip on stock”

Getting a grip on your inventory can be a major challenge. For Logistiekconcurrent, this meant that they had to look for a solution that prevented purchasing based on gut feeling. For example, in the former purchasing process, an ERP system kept track of the minimum and maximum stock. Inventories were updated in this system without using real-time data analyses. This meant that the purchasing process was very time-consuming, and the insight into the quality of the stock was also difficult. “As a supplier, we actually want to disappoint as few customers as possible. We used to buy based on gut feeling, but you actually want a data algorithm that monitors stock quality and maintains it,” says Rody Hermkens of Logistiekconcurrent.

Data determines stock quality

With over 10,000 products in the webshop, it’s often difficult to maintain an overview. How do you determine if the quality of the stock is really good? With the ABC categorization feature, Logistiekconcurrent is able to prioritize the right product groups and purchase quantities: “We keep a close eye on the service levels of the product categories so that we can guarantee the quality of our stock.”

Fellow buyer Loet Huttner also sees the power of the ABC categorization: “Previously, our purchasing process was based on feeling, without actually running an analysis. With the arrival of Optiply, we started working with real ABC levels, making it easy to monitor service levels. That is really an area for improvement because you no longer have to decide on gut feeling.”

Optiply not only analyzes sales history and stock levels, but information about trends and seasons, stock outs, delivery times and supplier performance are also included in the purchasing advice. For products with multiple suppliers, Logistiekconcurrent’s buyers can immediately see from which supplier they can purchase the best products at that time.