Thrive Technologies | Rebuilding Wholesale Inventory | Rick Morris

What they’ve learned is that while their ERP and supply chain planning systems might do an OK job (at best) at managing high-volume SKUs, they need help better managing unpredictable demand, low-volume SKUs, and sudden changes in demand and supply.

A study of wholesalers across North America revealed that the major reason why wholesalers struggle in these areas is because of inadequate visibility of their inventory.

Among their most common issues are:

• Inadequate fill rates and inventory turns on parts
• Stockouts and lost sales on high-volume items
• Excessive dead stock
• Imbalance of inventory across locations

Over the past few years, Georgia-based Thrive Technologies has developed patent-pending AI technologies that optimize a wholesaler’s existing ERP system rather than requiring a large and risky enterprise software implementation. The results have been impressive to say the least, with clients experiencing a 78% reduction in dead stock over 12 months, and an improvement in parts fill rates from under 80% to 88%.

Instead of using the same approach wholesale distributors have been using for decades and accepting the losses as “the cost of doing business,” Thrive has challenged that thinking with AI technologies that are significantly enhancing inventory operations and boosting profitability.

Contrary to the massive challenge of implementing a new ERP or supply chain planning system to address their needs — and being disappointed with the outcome — Thrive’s solutions including Thermostock® and Tiltmeter® are optimizing ERP settings to solve long-standing wholesaler inventory issues. Wholesalers stock countless SKUs, which makes it impossible for buyers to analyze each one and adjust order levels — especially low-selling SKUs which make up the majority of a wholesaler’s inventory. Leveraging AI and machine learning, wholesale buyers can spend their time on other important tasks and their A & B items instead.

Rebuilding the Supply Chain

The way that wholesale distributors have been managing their inventory is broken, and Thrive is addressing this fact with its innovative solutions. Every ERP and supply chain planning system can claim they are managing inventory with adequate forecasting, but they cannot claim to accurately forecast to the degree needed by wholesalers.

In 2001, Thrive built its own supply chain planning system based on forecasting. They have been in this space for the last two decades.

“We want wholesale distributors to leverage their existing ERP instead of buying a brand-new system that comes with risk, an expensive cost, a lengthy implementation time, and batched (not real-time) data,” says Rick Morris, CEO of Thrive.

Rick combined more than 20 years of experience in wholesale distribution with a lifelong background in analytical software to invent Thrive’s product offerings, which are attaining unprecedented improvements in wholesale turns and fill rates. By optimizing wholesale distributors’ ERP systems, wholesalers can maximize their profits without needing to implement a new system, which would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thrive is a data-driven company with customers who rave about the improvement in their inventory and the innovative partnership that Thrive brings to all their clients.

Thrive wants users to keep their current system and use ERP optimizers instead to help in all the ways (and more) that a new buying system could. Because supply chain planning and ERP systems rely on inaccurate forecasts to manage inventory, a new system implementation is unable to reduce dead stock and improve fill rates on low volume SKU’s like parts.. Instead of incurring a large expense attempting a new supply chain planning or ERP system, Thrive encourages wholesale distributors to optimize their existing ERP system, addressing their needs with its AI solutions at a fraction of the cost, with no risk, and substantially less implementation time.

Helping Clients Get More

With standard purchasing systems, it takes 4-6 months to be alerted to changes in demand and supply. Thrive’s analysis of wholesale distributors across North America tells them that an average of 70% of wholesale distributor’s SKUs sell to just one or two customers. If they lose that customer, their inventory performance can plummet without a quick response time. If they gain a customer that is buying a large volume of a particular SKU, they may experience stockouts until they adjust.

However, 4-6 months is far too long to react to inventory changes as a result of departing and new customers. By detecting these changes sooner (in 1-2 months with Thrive’s AI technologies), wholesale distributors can reduce lost sales and dead stock by addressing customer changes faster.

Thrive partners with AWS (Amazon Web Services) to provide innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) inventory optimization technologies for SKU-intensive companies. AWS services offer unparalleled reliability, flexibility, and scalability to enhance the value of their AI technologies for the clients. All their applications and the client’s data reside in IP-locked services, with end-to-end security and the same reliability features used by Amazon’s multi-billion-dollar business.

“We built our applications to use the same ultra-secure, cutting-edge data centers that host Amazon’s global presence,” explains Rick. “These data centers feature always-up-to-date robust physical and digital security measures with active threat protection and monitoring. In the age of constant cyber-security threats to mid-size and large-scale wholesalers, we believe our clients will have the greatest security possible under the AWS umbrella.”

Building A Great Future

Rick and his team are proud of Thrive’s successes with their clients from different wholesale distribution sectors. A hose and fittings company based in Canada needed help managing its slow-moving inventory. It had $4.5 million in dead stock across its D & E items. In just 12 months of leveraging Thermostock, Thrive helped this company decrease dead stock on those D & E items by 78.5%. For another Canadian wholesaler, the results were rapid, as they saw a 46% reduction in dead stock in just four months.

Wholesale distributors are facing issues beyond dead stock, such as inventory fill rates. A gas and welding supplies distributor based out of Colorado needed help meeting its targeted mark of 80% for its inventory fill rate on its slow-moving parts. After implementing Thermostock, the company was consistently at 88%, surpassing its target goal.

Thrive plans to continue as a leader in this space. They are leveraging patent pending state-of-the-art technologies and AI methods to help wholesale distributors optimize their inventory.

 “We also plan to expand beyond North America to help wholesale distributors worldwide. We are proud to be recognized as an innovating leader in this space,” said Rick. “Our goal is to help wholesale distributors make more money from their inventory. We are proud of the results, and we look forward to continuing to be leaders in inventory innovation.”