The last 10km

Most manufacturers already use software to manage their operations, often something like CIN7 or Unleashed, paired with Xero or similar for financials. Together, these systems are relied on as the backbone of day-to-day operations.

The problem is that platforms like CIN7 are designed as one-size-fits-all solutions. Their website, for example, says they serve many industries, including food and beverage, retail, fashion, wholesale, e-commerce, and manufacturing. Unleashed is built for even more, with around 20 different industries listed on their site.

While it makes sense for CIN7 and Unleashed to take business where they can, it also means they are built for breadth, not depth. It’s not necessarily their fault – it’s more likely just a commercial reality. Their business model might not work if they focused on a single industry, say food manufacturing, to the exclusion of all others.

What this shows is that no inventory system can be perfectly tailored to every business. At best, you are getting a 90 percent fit.

So using one of these systems is like building a sealed highway 90 kilometres long, but leaving the final 10 kilometres unsealed. If you make that trip several times a day, the last stretch, full of bumps, dust, and surprises, becomes a major source of cost and frustration.

Consider a real manufacturer paying $18,000 a year in subscription fees for an inventory management system — almost $100,000 over five years.

Despite that investment, around 80 percent of their inventory planning and tracking was still done in spreadsheets. One spreadsheet had over 20 tabs, covering batch planning, audit records, floor-level data entry, machine checklists, forecasting, and raw material orders.

CIN7 was their highway. The spreadsheets were the last 10 kilometres of unsealed road.

While the spreadsheets were well structured and maintained – in this case a neat, tidy unsealed road – what the business needed was an end-to-end highway.

The reason is because of the hidden costs the last 10 kilometres creates.

Consider an obvious one: data entry.

Every time the manufacturer processed a batch, multiple people had to manually copy information between the spreadsheet and CIN7. Non-stop switching from dirt road to sealed road and back again.

The costs of endless data entry don’t arrive as a bill, but they’re just as real. If a management-level employee spends just 20 percent of their week re-entering and checking inventory data, that is $20k each year on a task done faster and more accurately by a computer.

Ultimately, it does not really matter how good your highway is if the last 10 kilometres is a workaround.

So how can manufacturers get a complete solution?

It starts with thorough research. You need to find an off-the-shelf system that gets you as close as possible to the endpoint. Before you get demos, remember software is just a tool to get a job done, so write out a complete list of requirements you need the software to meet, and know which ones are non-negotiable. Do research online to find at least three options. Most will give you a free demo of their software where you can ask whether it meets your requirements list.

Then, for the final stretch, invest in light customisation so that the highway actually meets the reality of your business workflows. If you’ve done a good job on the first part, your highway will be nice and long, so the customisation only needs to fill a short gap. While you might still need to upgrade that last stretch every five years as your company hits new growth milestones, your bottom line and your staff will thank you for it.