The supply chain problem is never generic. A manufacturer loses margin between the bill of materials and the shelf. A retailer loses it between the back room and the shelf. We wrote a report on each one, with the research to back it.
Each report is free. 16 to 18 pages, with every statistic sourced.
An online retailer rarely has an ordering problem. It has a joining problem. Each marketplace, each carrier and each accounting system works on its own, and the cost turns up where they meet.
Every channel keeps its own order record and its own copy of stock. Nobody owns the ground between them.
Free stock is on-hand minus reserved minus in-transit. When a channel holds a stale copy, it oversells inside the sync gap.
A return is an authorisation, an inbound shipment, an inspection, a stock decision, a refund and a ledger entry. Most teams run it on email.
Somebody watches a spreadsheet and remembers a lead time. The reorder point exists in their head, not in a system.
What multi-channel selling, returns and manual stock work take out of an online retailer, and what to do about it.
Retail loses money at both ends of the same problem. An empty shelf sends a shopper to a competitor, and a back room of stock that will not sell becomes a markdown. Both come from the same cause.
Each site knows its own position. Nobody can answer what the group holds, or where to move it from.
A branch rings the distribution centre and somebody writes it down. There is no request, no approval and no in-transit record.
Safety stock was calculated for a demand pattern that has since changed. Nothing recalculates it against the current forecast.
The same product carries a different price by channel, by region and by customer group, with no rule that decides which one wins.
What multi-site retail and FMCG distribution lose to stock in the wrong place, and how to close the gap.
A mid-market manufacturer knows its revenue to the cent. It rarely knows the true cost of a finished good, because that cost is a calculation over moving parts. Most margin problems in FMCG sit in that gap.
Component prices move with every supplier quote, and scrap moves with the batch. A cost set last quarter is not this batch.
Too little finished goods loses the sale. Too much raw material ties up cash and, in food, expires before it is used.
A request starts as a message, gets approved by reply, lands in a spreadsheet, and only then becomes a purchase order.
FSSC 22000, HACCP and ISO all want a movement trail. Reconstructing one from paper and spreadsheets takes days.
Why FMCG and industrial manufacturers lose margin between the bill of materials and the shelf, and what to do about it.
A small operator does not lose work because its trucks are slow. It loses work because the quote arrives second, and because the retailers who need delivering done have no way to find it.
Winning a new shipper means cold outreach. Meanwhile the retailers and manufacturers who need a carrier are already inside a platform.
One person understands the pricing. It cannot be priced by zone, by distance or by customer, and it cannot answer a request automatically.
Waybills, labels, customs declarations and HS codes each get typed again, and each retype is a chance to be wrong at a border.
A customer with no visibility rings the office. Answering takes a person, and it happens all day.
How small and mid-size carriers, couriers and freight forwarders win more work by being quotable and findable.
Every statistic carries a named, published source, and each report ends with a numbered source list. Where we could not verify a figure against the original publication, we left it out and made the point without a number. A chart that explains a mechanism rather than a finding is labelled "Illustrative", so it is never mistaken for research.
Each report also names the conditions in which a different product is the better choice. These are our reports, and we are not neutral. Telling you where we do not fit is the only honest way to tell you where we do.
Tell us how you operate and we will point you at the right report, or show you the platform against your own numbers.