With today’s technology, you might think inventory accuracy is a given, but for many reasons, it’s not. Your inventory may be siloed in channels -- maybe it’s housed in both stores and distribution centers, or at your business partners’ locations. Or perhaps your inventory levels fluctuate rapidly like at chain groceries, where every order consists of a number of SKUs and during every hour there are thousands of transactions. Or you may be one of those companies that’s growing by acquisition and now you’re trying to manage multiple inventory tracking systems. What should be a global view of all available-to-promise inventory is instead just a keyhole view of a subset of it.

Because companies don’t have an accurate, up-to-the-minute view of their inventory, they’re losing sales by showing stockouts when stock is actually available, aggravating customers by overpromising, giving away margin due to markdowns and rush shipping charges, carrying excess safety stock (in order to prevent those aforementioned stockouts) and limiting their ability to enter new sales channels.