A distributor I know was bleeding cash. They had $2 million in slow-moving stock sitting in a warehouse, but their sales team kept ordering more. Why? Because their inventory numbers were so inaccurate, nobody trusted them. Sound familiar? They finally called in ERP Consulting to run a 30-day blitz.
The Problem Wasn’t the System, It Was the Process
They had an old system, but the real issue was a game of telephone. The warehouse used one spreadsheet. Purchasing used another. And accounting had their own magic numbers. The ERP Consulting team did one simple thing: they forced everyone into one room with a single Excel sheet for a reconciliation session.
The result was ugly. They found 4,000 units of raw material that were marked “active” but hadn’t moved in 18 months. That alone was $200,000 in cash sitting idle.
- They stopped ordering any material that was already overstocked.
- They ran a physical count of the top 100 SKUs every week for a month.
- They created a simple rule: no new purchase order unless the current stock is below a safety level.
How the Cleanup Changed Everything
Within 30 days, their inventory accuracy jumped from 65% to 92%. The purchasing team could finally trust the numbers. They stopped panic-buying, and their cash flow improved almost instantly. The ERP Consulting team didn’t install a single piece of software—they just fixed the human process.
Here’s the real win: when they later bought an ERP system, they didn’t need to hire a team of data cleaners. The foundation was solid. That saved them another $50,000 in consulting fees during implementation.
Your Next Step: Run a 30-Day Challenge
- Pick your top 20 most valuable SKUs.
- Count them physically every single week for a month.
- Compare that count against what your system says.
I bet you’ll find a surprise. Clean inventory data is the single cheapest way to boost your cash flow. A good ERP Consulting engagement starts here, not with software.