Unlocking staff bandwidth for making higher value decisions
We worked with a UK-wide retailer to help them understand what could be achieved through automating the setting of stock levels, and how this new way of working could be implemented across their business.
Opportunity to reduce excess stock
With products held in stock across circa 200 shopfronts, there was significant opportunity to both reduce the amount of cash tied up in stock where there was excess stock, whilst also increasing stock holding for lines where insufficient stock was being held.
However, if set-up wrong, the impact on the business could be huge. Therefore, identifying a suitable forecasting algorithm that met the specific requirements of the business before making widespread and systematic changes was important.
Trym built a tool to test stock level recommendations based on a number of inputs and calculations. This allowed our client to also carry out an initial trial across a selection of shopfronts to monitor the impact of the calculated inventory levels. This meant that the algorithm could be further improved to capture specific product nuances.
With the inventory levels calculation scoped out, a decision on the best software solution could then be made… In the short term, the Trym model was developed and automated, to support business requirements. In parallel, the specification of the model was used to produce a system specification for the existing ERP.
