Netstock: inventory forecasting and planning

As a Product Manager, Netstock has made my day-to-day work much easier. Instead of spending hours digging through reports and spreadsheets to understand our stock position, I can quickly see what needs attention and take action. Having all the key insights in one place helps me spot potential issues early and identify opportunities to improve availability and inventory performance. The time I save on manual analysis allows me to focus more on supporting customers, working with suppliers, and driving the business forward. The only downside is that it takes a bit of time to learn all the features. Once I got comfortable with the platform, though, it became a real time-saver and gave me much better visibility into our inventory planning. Netstock helps take the guesswork out of inventory planning. It makes it much easier to spot potential stock issues, stay on top of demand, and make decisions faster without having to go through multiple spreadsheets and reports.

The customer success team was generally responsive and professional throughout our implementation. Jameson, in particular, stayed engaged for a very long implementation period and continued trying to solve problems as they arose. Netstock also responded promptly when issues were raised, and their leadership ultimately offered additional resources, reporting support, and further training in an effort to help us extract more value from the platform. The issue was never a lack of effort from the individuals assigned to our account. The biggest issue was the gap between what we believed we were buying during the sales process and what the platform was ultimately able to deliver in our environment. We are a manufacturing/distribution company running Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Our ERP has some complexity around units of measure, assemblies, BOMs, and purchasing logic, but I would not characterize our environment as unusually complex for a business of our type. The implementation became an extremely long process centered around data validation, extract modifications, configuration changes, and repeated questions about whether the recommendations could actually be trusted. Roughly nine months into a twenty-four-month agreement, Netstock was still describing us as only then beginning a six-week “Active Use” phase prior to onboarding completion. Netstock also stated that earlier sessions should not really be counted as true Use Phase sessions. That is very different from the implementation experience we believed we were purchasing. We also encountered product limitations that were material to the way our business operates. These included issues involving fractional units of measure and BOM conversions. At one point the system produced an obviously unusable recommendation with approximately $27 million of model value for shrink wrap. Netstock worked on fixes, and some issues were attributable to decisions or changes on our side, but the cumulative effect was that our users lost confidence in the recommendations. Once users stop trusting a planning system, adoption becomes extremely difficult. That became the central issue for us. At approximately $2,400 per month, Netstock needed to provide a meaningful improvement over what we were already able to accomplish internally with Excel, Jet Reports, and direct ERP data. It never cleared that bar. We were also billed throughout the extended implementation. Netstock acknowledged in writing that its own technical backlog and staffing situation contributed to slower delivery, while also correctly identifying areas where BCW contributed to the complexity. We continued trying to make the product work well beyond the point where confidence had started to erode because we genuinely wanted the implementation to succeed. Ultimately, after concluding that the platform was not going to become a meaningful part of our procurement process, we asked Netstock for an early commercial exit. We did not ask for our implementation fee back. We did not ask for a refund of subscription fees already paid. We simply asked to stop paying the remaining term for a product that had not delivered sufficient value for our business. Netstock reviewed the request multiple times, including with senior customer success and finance leadership, and declined both an early release and any financial compromise. Their final position was that they were not permitting customers to exit contracts early given current economic conditions. That was particularly disappointing after such a long and unsuccessful implementation. Netstock is intended to improve forecasting, replenishment planning, inventory visibility, and purchasing decisions. For businesses whose operating model fits the platform well, I can see how those capabilities could be valuable. In our case, however, the incremental value never became substantial enough to justify the subscription cost, implementation effort, or ongoing organizational attention. The underlying problem was confidence. Once our purchasing users repeatedly encountered recommendations that appeared unreliable, getting them to depend on the system became increasingly difficult.

Simplified Netsuite integration! Great UI/UX for demand planning. Simply put.....Nothing stands out that we don't like. Improving working capital efficiency via better planning visibility for us and our suppliers, who subsequently approved lower MOQ's, further improving our inventory & working capital efficiency.

Overall, Netstock is a powerful tool for inventory management. It has significantly improved our forecasting accuracy and helped us optimize our working capital by reducing excess stock while maintaining optimal service levels.

Overall, my experience with Netstock was positive. The platform made inventory management and forecasting easier by providing useful insights and helping identify potential stock issues. I found the system reliable and helpful for making more informed purchasing and inventory decisions. While there was a learning curve with some of the more advanced features, the benefits outweighed the challenges. Overall, Netstock is a useful tool for businesses looking to improve inventory planning and efficiency.

ERP Integration: Smooth and rapid connection with existing ERP systems prevents the need for complex, manual spreadsheets. Responsive Support: Customers frequently highlight the helpful onboarding and responsive customer service team.

Before using Netstock, we had a visibility problem which meant that we could not predict quickly and accurately the stock levels of a product over the next few months. We work with very long lead times and being able to have good visible and easy to use data is extremely important to both ourselves and our clients. We also used to work in silos in excel spreadsheets, meaning each state worked in its own special way creating a risk for the company, we now have all the same processes and the data is available and explicit to anyone.

We use Netstock for future forecasting, cash flow management, and Stock KPI's. Prior to Netstock, we used Excel spreadsheets, which were high risk because only one person knew how they worked and could use them. Now with Netstock, we have a cloud-based system with multiple users who understand how the system works and can see live what is going on.

We personally use it most for demand planning and reordering. It has taken the need of manually performed excel workbooks to determine our demand and ordering. Saved significant amount of time on that front. We have used it a little bit for distribution between our two warehouses although not as much as I thought.