A $25 million industrial parts distributor came to our team at ERPNext Consulting with a brand new problem: business was growing, but customers were complaining more than ever. They had three warehouses in three states, 11,000 SKUs, and every location ran its own spreadsheet. One branch would order 200 units from a supplier while another branch sat on 500 identical units that nobody could see.
The stockout rate had crept up to 15%, which means almost one in every six orders was missing something. The owner told me the most painful part was the phone calls from sales reps in the field asking warehouse staff to check inventory manually. Sales reps were becoming stock-checkers, and they hated it.
Visibility is not a screen — it is a discipline
ERPNext Consulting started by putting all three warehouses into one system with a shared product master. That sounds boring, but it was the turning point. Every bin got a code, every transfer between warehouses got a document, and every location became answerable for its own count.
Suddenly the branch that needed 100 units could see in real time that another branch had 380 and could transfer them overnight instead of ordering new stock. Inter-branch transfers increased by 40% in the first three months, and the company avoided about $60,000 in duplicate purchases.
What every distributor should measure weekly
Stop waiting for monthly reports. Track these three numbers every Monday morning:
- Stockout count in the last seven days, broken down by warehouse — not a monthly average.
- Transfer-on-time rate, because a transfer that takes four days defeats the purpose.
- Slow-moving inventory over 180 days, which is cash sleeping in a corner.
After six months the stockout rate dropped from 15% to 6%, and inventory turnover improved from 3.2 to 5.1 turns per year. The cash released was roughly $800,000, which the owner used to open a fourth branch. ERPNext Consulting also set up a simple alert so purchasing sees a supplier delay before it becomes a customer disappointment.
One honest warning: no system will fix a warehouse where staff do not update counts. If you walk the floor and see handwritten sticky notes on bins, fix that habit first, then bring in the software.