RETAIL & WHOLESALE

Ferris & Cole Retail

60% fewer stockouts, without adding headcount.

Manual reorder spreadsheets led to frequent stockouts and duplicated purchase orders. We automated reordering and connected it to live inventory reporting.

Get Results Like TheseRead the Story
Reduction in stockout incidents
60%Reduction in stockout incidents
Stores now on one live inventory view
5Stores now on one live inventory view
Duplicate purchase orders since rollout
0Duplicate purchase orders since rollout
Average stockout-to-reorder time, down from 9
2 daysAverage stockout-to-reorder time, down from 9

AT A GLANCE

Size
40 staff
Locations
5 stores + 1 warehouse
Timeline
6 weeks
Service Level
Power Platform + 365

WHAT WE DEPLOYED

  • Power BI
  • Power Automate
  • SharePoint
  • Excel
THE CHALLENGE

Where They
Started.

Manual reorder spreadsheets, maintained by two buyers who didn't always talk to each other, led to frequent stockouts on fast-moving items and duplicated purchase orders on slow ones. By the time a stockout showed up in a weekly report, the store had usually already lost several days of sales on that item.

  • Two buyers maintained separate reorder spreadsheets that regularly disagreed
  • Stockouts weren't visible until the weekly manual inventory report
  • Purchase orders were duplicated when both buyers reordered the same SKU

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THE WORK

What We
Did.

We automated reorder workflows in Power Automate, connected to live inventory reporting in Power BI, so both buyers work from the same real-time numbers and reorders trigger before shelves go empty.

01

Inventory data consolidation

Merged both buyers' spreadsheets and the POS system's inventory feed into a single Power BI data model.

02

Live stock dashboards

Built per-store and warehouse dashboards showing stock levels and days-of-supply, refreshed continuously instead of weekly.

03

Automated reorder triggers

Set Power Automate flows to raise a draft purchase order the moment a SKU crosses its reorder point, tagged to one buyer to avoid duplicates.

04

Buyer handoff training

Trained both buyers on the shared dashboard so reorder decisions are made from the same numbers, not two spreadsheets.

We'd scope the same kind of engagement for your business, with timelines and effort against each stage.

Get a Scoped PlanCompare Service Levels
We stopped finding out about stockouts from customers asking why the shelf was empty. Now we see it coming days ahead.
Owen Ferris · Co-OwnerFerris & Cole Retail
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This for Your Business?

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