Full Transcript for Using the Inventory Reporting Tool ft. Paramount Automotive

it. Sarah Archer:                     That's awesome. I have a family in Memphis, so near and dear to my heart. Two reasons to love it: my family and also the Paramount Distribution Center in Memphis. Sean Zahrae:                      And the barbecue. Sarah Archer:                     And the barbecue. Oh man, the barbecue's good. And the ducks that live at the hotel. Have you guys been to the duck hotel? What's it called? The Peabody? Our listeners probably care very deeply about the duck hotel. But no, my family lives there, and as a kid, we would go visit the decks and eat barbecue. So, I'll have to go back and visit and see the distribution center. Since that's not related to anything that we're going to talk about today, let's go ahead and jump into the inventory reporting tool. So, Matt, let's start with you. Let's talk about how the tool came about and the reasons behind it. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah, sure. So, I mean, something that we had to do with NetSuite customers and just internally, you're going through and you see issues in NetSuite or in RF-Smart, and you have to diagnose those. And a lot of times, that ends us back in NetSuite doing safe searches and looking at inventory and trying to figure out what actually happened through this transaction history that exists in NetSuite's records. And so, we kept having to do the same thing over and over again, and we were like, "Is there a way we can stop repeating ourselves with this and maybe centralize it, and then also give these tools to our customers to try to empower them to research this themselves, make them feel a little more in control of what's happening inside their account?" Matthew De Gueh...:     So, that was the goal, and now we have this tool where it's number of searches you can do, and really just safe search at NetSuite that expose the data. But there're things you may not commonly think about or go to look after, and they're trying to shine a light on all those stark little crevices in NetSuite. Sarah Archer:                     So, I want to talk a little bit about some best practices and how to utilize the tool, but first, let's talk about the research that you did and putting it all in place, because you worked very heavily on this project. Huh? Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, this was one where we brainstormed internally, my managers were like, "We really need to get something in the hands of customers that can help diagnose these issues or at least identify them." And so, that was something that we have our knowledge base to help with that already, and that's something we've been putting more and more content on. As we hit common issues, we want to put them up there so that customers can research that, find the issue, but that doesn't exist for NetSuite in the same way. Right? You have SuiteAnswers, but a lot of times that's very specific error messages don't easily translate to the problem you're actually seeing in NetSuite. So, that was the goal, was we spent probably, I mean, a month or two months on it to really get it going and get the tool fully fleshed out, get all the information in there. Matthew De Gueh...:     Now, it's something that you request the bundle be available for your account. You can install it inside of NetSuite just like you install any other bundles. And it's been pretty exciting from there. I mean, it's really an ongoing project for us, too. Right? It's something that, as we're seeing more and more issues with customers or more and more issues inside of NetSuite, we're finding all those other dark crevices we haven't hit yet. And as we find those, we're going to like, "Well, let's make something to identify those." So, we've been adding to it over the past year or so, and we're having another round to change this we're going to add to it as well. So, we're just trying to prioritize those and push through them. Sarah Archer:                     So, you talked about the knowledge base. I think that this is a good place to pause and just let me ask, can you explain the knowledge base and explain some of the resources that are available because a lot of our customers don't know that this exists and it is a game changer when you're using the knowledge base. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we obviously get a ton of cases from customers, and we're trying to resolve those. And then, oftentimes, we see the same things crop up over and over again, so the same error message or, "I'm doing this thing and it didn't go right," or something like that. And so, oftentimes, we're able to put together an article that just highlights, "Here's what the problem is, and here's some keywords that'll find it for you." So, it's really just a knowledge base of articles that you can search on, type in your error message, whatever you need to do to get to it, and then there's a whole detailed step-by-step guide of, "Follow these steps, and it'll solve the problem," and like, "Here's how you can research that. Here's how it got that way." And that ranges anywhere from just looking at inventory in RF-Smart or in NetSuite to packing errors and shipping errors and things like that. Sarah Archer:                     And there's a lot of different articles and webinars, too, write about the inventory reporting tool specifically. Matthew De Gueh...:     Right. Yeah. We actually do have webinars up there, as well, and we've been doing webinars for, I think over a year now, right? Sarah Archer:                     Yeah. Matthew De Gueh...:     So, we have a number of webinars up there that are all related, I mean, to a whole host of things, right? We have ones on our [Picked Bin 00:07:38] feature, and we have one on Pick Manager now, I think, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So, inventory reporting tool has its own webinar up there, our EDI pack station and stuff up there. So, yeah, tons of resources on the site. It's awesome. Sarah Archer:                     I'm pretty sure

that by the time everyone is able to listen to this podcast, they will also be able to watch a webinar on the knowledge base about the knowledge base, so that's a good place to get started. Matthew De Gueh...:     Some meta videos. Sarah Archer:                     Some meta videos. If you are interested in knowing more about the knowledge base, we took a little sidebar there, but I will say go ahead and reach out to info@rfsmart.com, and we can help you get set up with that. That is for RF-Smart customers, but there is a ton of resources available there for you guys. So, let's talk a little bit more about the tool and what it was like for you as you developed it. You said that this is still an evolving project, and so I want to take a moment and talk about the way that we're addressing some of those challenges. Matthew De Gueh...:     Sure. So, I mean, some of the things we did initially were more of the cut and dry, show negative bins, show negative inventory, the obvious things you'd look for, but as that's evolved, one of the issues we found was decimals. Right? Customers would have decimals that go out to the nth place, and NetSuite doesn't really show that to you well, and so it can cause weird error messages that happen in NetSuite and everything like that. So, we made a search that we're able to identify those, anything that goes beyond this decimal place to this decimal place, it'll give you a report and says, "Here's all the problems you have". And that way you can take those, try to shore them up to something that NetSuite likes and won't mess up, and then continue on your way. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. We did that. We created a stock count tool. That's a huge part for a lot of customers, right? You're doing wall-to-wall counts or cycle counts, and we have a prep tool that walks you through like, "If all these things are good, then you should be A-OK on counts. If you don't have negative inventory, there's not differences between location and bin quantities and all these niche things that you wouldn't look at in NetSuite, if these are all good, then you're going to have a good time counting with RF-Smart." Sarah Archer:                     So, let's talk about the benefits to our customers, and you've named a number of them, but I know that you've got a customer story about how they were able to use it to solve their problems. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. So, I mean, there's been a number of stories we've hit on just since we've had it done where customers have had a good experience with it, and it's really helped them get answers from NetSuite and solve inventory issues they've been struggling with for years. But there was one in particular where the customer was, they had a bunch of inventory that didn't add up. They look at the location, they look at the bin, they look at their lot or serial stuff, and just nothing adds up the way it's supposed to, and they try to fix it and it just makes it worse. And they try it unfix it, and

it makes it worse. There seemed to be nothing that makes it go in the right direction. And they had pulled on NetSuite and they had support cases open with them, and NetSuite couldn't figure it out either. And so, that was where we had the report inside the inventory reporting tool that showed differences between bins and locations. Matthew De Gueh...:     And so, I was able to get on a call with them. Right off the bat, I saw like, "Hey, these location quantities aren't matching, so go run this report." And they were like, "Oh, this explains literally everything we've been doing for the past..." I mean, it was frustrating for them in the sense that they've been trying to fix it for four months, or whatever, and they couldn't, and then to have it shown to them in one report and they're like, "Well, this is great." So, then, I think they spent the next couple of days trying to go through and clean up all the issues they had. Matthew De Gueh...:     And then they went to NetSuite and told NetSuite that, and it was a really good success story for them. I mean, they're doing much better now that they have all those things sorted. I mean, the interesting part of that story to me was that they had dedicated people to inventory, they had the people that knew what were going on, so as soon as they saw the report, everything clicked. Right? They were like, "Oh, it's this, obviously. The location's off from the bin. We got to go fix that." And so, they were able to take it from there, and it was great. Sarah Archer:                     I was actually talking to one of our business analysts recently about the inventory reporting tool, and he was sharing a story with me about how customers utilize this tool. And we're going to talk to Sean here in just a minute. Sean, we haven't forgotten about you. But I'm curious to know what is the best practice around using this tool? Should you be using it once a day, once a month? What are the best ways to use it? Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. I mean, it really depends per customer, like based on the use case, but oftentimes, I mean, having negative bins is never good, right? It means something went wrong in NetSuite. Running the negative bin report daily or weekly, however often you can deal with that, I mean, that's going to differ for customers. I would probably run that daily, but it just depends. Negative locations is also bad. Shouldn't really have many things at location level, so doing some of their checks on that stuff is good. Matthew De Gueh...:     There's also a serial finder and a lot finder, so if you have that level of inventory, and you're trying to find specifically where that exists in NetSuite, if it didn't exist where you thought it was, it'll tell you right where it is. Transaction history report, so you can see a history of all the transactions that moved inventory for that item or in a bin or a lot or serial number. It goes through all that. When you're starting to see errors in NetSuite, digging in on those issues is really the time to flip to the tool and it'll have a search for it, hopefully. Sarah Archer:                     So, I think that's a good transition to getting Sean in here. Sean, your team is using this tool, and so can you tell us how you're using it? How often are you using the tool? Sean Zahrae:                      Sure. So, we're not using it as frequently, thankfully, knock on wood. We don't have very many negative bin issues. But I have seen them happen from time to time, so that's not saying that it doesn't ever happen, but thankfully, we don't run into the issue as frequently. I actually initially heard about this tool from your support team when we were looking into, and Matt kind of touched on this a little bit, we had weird inventory issues when we looked at the location level, then we'd look at the bin level, and it wouldn't add up. And so, same thing, we talked to NetSuite, NetSuite support, we had a case open for a long time. They were giving us the run around. They couldn't really figure it out. And so, I called the RF-Smart help team because you guys are, for some reason, always available 24/7. It's awesome. Sarah Archer:                     We have a global presence. There's people all over. And I think you mentioned before, you love to talk to our guy in Australia, right? Sean Zahrae:                      He's my favorite because when I'm trying to debug problems and stuff, I can't let them go, so I'll sit here until 9L00 10:00 o'clock trying to figure stuff out. And he's been an awesome resource for me. But yeah, he's the one that actually installed the bundle for us, and you were looking at the negative inventory issues. Since then, it's given us a lot of insight into how RF-Smart works and how it interacts with NetSuite, and how NetSuite also handles its inventory. Like Matt was saying, there's a lot of base functionality in NetSuite, but it doesn't really give you a whole lot of insight into what's really happening in the background. Sean Zahrae:                      And so, for example, trying to track down a sales order, if you're using stuff like pick bins, for example, when you pick something, you're actually doing a bin transfer and a pick at the same time. And trying to track down something that happened months ago, you can write a save search to do it. It'll take you 30, 40 minutes, and then sometimes it'll take even longer to find the safe search you wrote a couple of months ago. Sarah Archer:                     Amen. [inaudible] Sean Zahrae:                      I've got so many save searches, it's impossible to find what I've written months ago. Sarah Archer:                     Right. Exactly. Sean Zahrae:                      But this tool allows you to search for transactions, for example, down to the specific bin, down to the lot level, so it's really helpful for us to be able to look at a transaction and go, "okay, this is kind of weird. Let's find out where the bin transfer

is and the item installment for this order so we can figure out what happened here in the background." And we immediately jumped to the inventory reporting tool to find those transactions for us. Sarah Archer:                     So, you talked a little bit about, you're not using it necessarily daily, which is good news. We're happy to hear that you are not having as as many issues. That's exciting. But I want to talk about the results that you have seen, so can you talk a little bit about, with your counting and the way that you're using this tool, what are some of the results that you've seen? Sean Zahrae:                      So, we have actually just started doing stock counts. It's funny, you guys suggested when we were going live that, "Hey, you should do a wall-to-wall inventory." We're like, "Inventory is probably good enough. We're going to avoid that. We'll just avoid inventory." So, we made the mistake of importing inventory, and as the story goes, best practice is usually there for a reason. So, we had inventory issues, obviously, down the road in couple of months. And so, we finished a wall-to-wall inventory using the normal bin count function, but obviously, after that, you want to maintain that inventory by utilizing stock counts. Sean Zahrae:                      And so, talking to support and trying to figure out what the best way to do this is, we were actually blessed because the stock count prep and all the stock count functions were already available in the inventory reporting tool by the time we got around to it. I think when it was initially installed, it wasn't there. And so, we were able to utilize that very quickly and figure out, "Hey, these are the fields we need in order to get stock count working properly." We were able to check all our negative inventories to make sure we were in a good starting point. And right now, we're in the final testing phases of stock counting, and we're about to release it for general availability to our warehouses. Sarah Archer:                     I've got to say, I would be remissed if I didn't mention that we do have an episode on counting and why you should count in the beginning. So, if you're listening and you haven't heard that, that's episode one of the podcast. It's called What Starts Right Stays Right, and that's definitely a good... If you're trying to get your inventory under control and you're trying to figure out counting, it's a good episode to listen to. One of the things, Sean, that you said to me was that you guys have learned to jump to this tool, and so this is your first line of defense. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sean Zahrae:                      Sure. I mean, it gives you, like I was mentioning before, it gives you a lot of insight in the stuff that NetSuite can do in the background. You can write a safe search to pull this information, but it's just so much easier to jump into this reporting tool because it's got everything readily available for you. We

commonly see, we introduced lot numbers coming into RF-Smart, coming into NetSuite, something that we didn't really have available to us in our previous piece of software. And as a result, when you introduce a lot numbers and you introduce tighter control of your inventory as a whole, you run into a lot of issues with people just in the warehouse, right? Used to it. Sean Zahrae:                      And so, we've had lot number issues, especially with stuff that was unlabeled. We threw it all into one lot to cycle that out of the warehouse, as we get new stuff that is lot number. And we also do something called... What do we call them? Unpicks or mispicks sometimes. Essentially, since we do a lot of e-commerce orders and we do a lot of volume, every once in a while, actually it's pretty frequently now, customers will call in and they'll want to cancel their order, out of the cancellation period that Amazon or eBay would allow them. And to try to maintain good customer support, more often than not, we let them cancel that order. Sean Zahrae:                      Well, NetSuite doesn't really understand canceling an order after it's been picked. It's extremely hard to do so, especially if you're using pick bins because then you have to find the bin transfer, and then you also have to find the [inaudible] fulfillment for that order and make sure that they both either get deleted or reallocated to put the inventory back where you need to put it back, or where the warehouse will put it back. And before, we had written a safe search, that we would essentially have to go through, filter down, find the two transactions. It was a massive pain. It takes us about maybe a minute, minute and a half to do in the inventory report tool. Sarah Archer:                     So, I think what I'm hearing, to summarize, is the results that you guys are seeing are not only is it saving you time because you're not having to spend hours looking through saved searches or hunting through NetSuite trying to figure out what the problem is, but you're also, especially in that unpick/mispick example, you're saving time just by being able to address it with the tool. So, saving time, sometimes it's more valuable than saving money, honestly. Sometimes having that time back is more valuable. Sean- Sean Zahrae:                      It's always equivalent, right? Because you're spending labor hours, and labor hours cost money so it's- Sarah Archer:                     Yeah, exactly. Sean Zahrae:                      [inaudible] saving money. Sarah Archer:                     Hours that people could be processing orders or doing other parts of their job they're trying to spend troubleshooting. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. Sean, you mentioned you guys have a lot numbers now. Have you guys seen any, I'm curious, because I've seen other customers have had just weird things between location levels and bin levels and lot number quantities where things just don't really sync, and then orders just won't go through and you'll get some really odd behavior. Have you guys seen anything like that? Sean Zahrae:                      We have, and initially, I think it's just because of the way NetSuite displays data. In NetSuite, if you're looking at the location level inventory, and you come down to, let's say, the inventory detail where you're looking at a bin location inventory, depending on how you're handling commitment, if you're not using [inaudible 00:21:20], sometimes... Or actually all sometimes, all the time, as far as I'm concerned, NetSuite will actually assign inventory at the location level but won't go down to the bin level. So, you'll see a natural discrepancy between the two screens, and it doesn't display that well. And that was something that was a... It was kind of a shock to us, we're coming into NetSuite because, obviously, large corporations use this, you would think that it would at least allocate down to the bin level or something automatically so that you would always display the correct inventory. That seems to not be the case. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. Have you guys had issues where you had to back out like a receipt that you did after the fact or something? Sean Zahrae:                      Mm-hmm (affirmative). All the time. Matthew De Gueh...:     And then that creates negative lots. Right? And you get all over the place with... Something was in the bin initially when you transferred out of it, but now because the receipt had to change, because there was something that was done wrong on it, it leaves you with this negative state afterwards. Sean Zahrae:                      Oh, yeah. So, we've actually ran into that exact issue where we've had to go in... I think somebody accidentally typed in like a zero at the end of a quantity or something when receiving, and nobody caught it during bin put away. So, when we were going back, we would adjust the receipt, and it would actually mess up all the records after that. So, the bin put away wasn't accurate, the lot number, I think we had to change one digit and threw everything else off, gave us a bunch of negative inventory. It was a whole mess. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. Have you guys had issues with case sensitivity with lots? Sean Zahrae:                      Oh, yeah. A lot. So- Matthew De Gueh...:     We're working on a search to bring that down the pipeline so you can show those. Because that's- Sean Zahrae:                      Sweet. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. That's a whole nother thing, right? If someone mistypes a lot, either in the UI or on RF-Smart, it stays that way, and NetSuite treats them as unique. Sean Zahrae:                      Yeah, exactly. We actually ran into the issue because, like I mentioned, we launched lots with NetSuite, but obviously, all of the inventory that were coming in previous to any receipts that were coming in after we launched NetSuite, didn't really have a lot number. So, we thought, "Hey, we'll just throw

it all under the same lot number, and we'll just tell the warehouse, 'If you don't see a lot item number or a lot scannable barcode, just use the word initial.'" And that's obviously not worked out as well as we thought it would, because initial, you got people hand typing it in, uppercase, lowercase. Sometimes they'll scan it off a barcode that we've given out, and that's all capital. And then, even RMAs coming in when you're receiving RMAs, depending on how they scan it back in, [inaudible] scanning that word initial or if they're they're hand typing it. So, we've seen a lot of discrepancies with the case sensitivity that's caused issues down the road. Sarah Archer:                     I love that we're having a little support powwow here right now. And speaking of support, one of the great benefits of the inventory reporting tool, and Matt, you can attest to this. Sean, you can too. Is that by being able to use this tool, it reduces the number of support cases that you have to enter, which is always nice because, Sean, I know you probably would prefer to not have to call in to support if you can fix the problem yourself. And Matt, you probably, you have lots of calls coming in, and so being able to utilize this tool to, A, help customers quickly solve their problems, but B, train them to be able to solve them themselves is really cool. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah. I mean, it's really about trying to empower the customer so they can actually solve these. I mean, we have seen cases go down, but giving that ability for customers to troubleshoot these things on their own, I think really increases their satisfaction. Right? Because they don't have to call in every single time. Every single time something goes wrong, it's like, "Oh my God, let me get on the phone and call NetSuite, call RF-Smart, call someone," and it's like, No, I just go here and I can look it up and figure it out in five minutes or something." Sarah Archer:                     Yeah. And I think a lot of our customers, too, Sean, maybe jump in here, but a lot of our customers, especially people who are the RF-Smart super user, NetSuite super user, whoever, they want to be able to master this technology. And so, I was doing an interview recently with someone who was like, "Yeah, I want to be able to handle this myself." Sean, what do you think about that? Sean Zahrae:                      Oh, absolutely. Myself and definitely my team, we enjoy being able to resolve issues just right on the spot and learn as much as we can about this tool. NetSuite offers training and certifications, but they only really get you so far. You see a lot of issues that have... You just wonder how they even happen. It's just because you have lots of people using the system either through RF-Smart or through other integrations. And so, there's a lot of stuff going on in NetSuite, and it's not necessarily stuff you've been trained for. And being able to have those tools and being able to understand and utilize them to be able to solve issues quickly is extremely important, especially when you're doing stuff where packages need to go out that same day. Sarah Archer:                     Yeah. I think the best summary is what you said, Matt, is it's about empowering the customer to be able to have control in their own hands, which I think is really cool. Thanks for developing that. That's awesome. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah, yeah. It's been great. Sarah Archer:                     As we wrap it up for today, Sean, I wanted to ask you one more question. When we get customers on the podcast, we usually just ask them what's advice you'd give to another RF-Smart customer? It could be about the inventory reporting tool, but it could be about something else. What advice would you give to somebody on RF-Smart? Sean Zahrae:                      If RF-Smart tells you that this is a best practice and you should do it, you should do it. Sarah Archer:                     Trust those inventory expert, supply chain experts. Sean Zahrae:                      Yeah, yeah. If they're telling you it's best practice, it's probably because somebody has done it the way you've done it and it did not end up working out. Matthew De Gueh...:     The follow up question to that is, who did it wrong? Who didn't follow best practice, and why are you telling me this? And I'm sure we have a story for you. Sean Zahrae:                      Well, I mean, we didn't follow best practice when we initially did inventory, and there were several reasons why we didn't end up following best practice. If I could do it over again, I definitely would have. But I'm sure you've had customers that don't want to inventory when they're coming in because it is very labor intensive. Matthew De Gueh...:     Yeah, for sure. Sarah Archer:                     It is. It's a lot of upfront work. And actually, when I was interviewing Matt and Jeremy, who did the podcast about cycle counting, they're like, "That's the big deterrent, right? Is that it's a lot of work." But it ends up saving you on the end, on the backend, because you, to quote them, "Once it starts right, it ends up staying right," which is good. But on the occasion that it doesn't, because we're all humans and we make errors, we've got the inventory reporting tool to have our back and make sure that we can continue to have accurate inventory, for sure. Sean Zahrae:                      Definitely. Sarah Archer:                     Well guys, before we go, is there anything that you want to add, Sean or Matt? Anything you want to say? No? Matthew De Gueh...:     Nope. Sarah Archer:                     No? All right. Well guys, thank you so much for being here. Sean, thanks for Zooming in. Matt, thanks for your expertise. Sean, thanks again. Matt, thanks again. For those of you tuning in, remember to subscribe to the podcast. You can subscribe on Spotify, Apple Music, Google, Amazon, YouTube, all of the places that you like to stream podcasts. This is available for you to listen to. And if it helps you, it will probably help somebody else that you know, so make sure you share it with a friend. Again, I'd just like to say thanks to Matt and Sean, and thanks for those of you listening. And we will talk to you again real soon. Thanks, guys.