B&G Ltd reduces stock-outs by 61%

Netstock ticks all the supply chain boxes

They created separate spreadsheets per supplier and, using macros and lookups, and average sales forecasts would calculate their order requirements. They needed to analyze their supplier history data as it’s directly related to demand forecasting. This required looking at order information against goods received information, which was a slow and manual process for each supplier and each data entry. “This was a time-consuming process as it took more than a day to update the data and prepare it at the start of every month. When I looked at Netstock, it did exactly what we needed, was cloud-based and cost-effective – it ticked all our boxes,” says Adrian Carolan, Director at B&G Ltd.

B&G Ltd was initially reluctant to abandon their spreadsheets and trust the Netstock data, especially considering all the disruptions in the supply chain with extended lead times. They decided to run Netstock in parallel with their spreadsheets for approximately six months.

“We are now confident in the Netstock order recommendations and have abandoned our spreadsheets completely.”

Staying on top of market trends

Like many companies, B&G Ltd suffered stockouts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, they overcompensated on some of their 1,600 SKUs and found themselves with a lot of excess. Due to a downturn in the market, this excess has been slow to move. “Netstock can’t predict the market and macro trends, so that’s one thing you need to be on top of. This isn’t easy when you don’t have a crystal ball. Keep a careful eye on market trends, and when you see that your market is declining, you need to consider that when looking at your forecast, or else you will end up with excess stock.”

B&G Ltd has not only seen their fill rate improve from 80 – 93.6%, but the saving on time has also been significant. “We can spread our workload across several weeks because we can go in at any time, and the data is up to date. We can place a couple of orders per month which, on some suppliers, is helpful to be able to do.

Netstock is my first port of call in terms of any stock-related queries. I no longer even look in our ERP. I can confidently state that Netstock has helped me a great deal with my demand planning, and I can happily recommend Netstock to any stock holding company.”