Mastering Inventory Velocity - Power BI Case Study

“Data and analytics should play a big part in monitoring your business supply chain performance... measuring your inventory turns, order fulfillment rates, and delivery times can help your executives to identify trends that galvanize the supply chain process.” – Paul J. Noble (Forbes, 2023)

Working with midmarket distributors, we see an almost universal need for better visibility into inventory velocity as a leading indicator of profitability and cash flow. With solid analysis, distributors can proactively optimize inventories by balancing supply with demand and identifying opportunities to reduce slow-moving or obsolete products that tie up cash reserves.

Case Study - Midmarket Distributor

We partnered with a North American distributor ($160+M) that provides technically complex products to a niche industry. Tight inventory controls are key to this company's success, so they sought to incorporate data from three disparate sources - Dymax, The Business Edge, and Quantum - to provide a unified view into their cycle times across four US locations.

Additional areas addressed:

Analyzing product trends as their industry evolves.
Tightening part-level inventory and slow-moving/obsolete products that were a major source of tied-up cash.
Comparing vendor performance in terms of volume and on-time delivery.

Sample Inventory Velocity Report

Inventory Velocity and Part Detail dashboards provided management insight into critical inventory metrics (e.g., on-hand inventory, sales and quote trends, inventory by age, etc.) to better control costs, improve ordering, and reduce slow-moving and obsolete inventory.

Key features:

Customizable KPI thresholds
Inventory values bucketed by age for cross-filter analysis.
Part Detail Drill Through with in-depth analysis of inventory on hand, sales trends, and shipment details

Blue Margin Inventory Velocity