In distribution the margin is thin enough that a single avoidable error — a stock-out, a duplicate ship, an unbilled freight charge — eats the profit on several good orders. Most operations run on systems that each hold part of the picture. We join them, so the number on the screen is the number in the warehouse.
Every distribution business runs the same trade-off: hold enough stock to serve the customer, hold little enough that the balance sheet survives it. Getting that trade-off right requires knowing what you have, what is committed, what is arriving and what it actually costs to serve each customer. Most operations know two of the four. The sub-sectors below feel it differently.
Multi-warehouse inventory, customer-specific pricing and contracts, rebates, and the margin analysis that tells you which accounts genuinely pay their way.
Store and online inventory as one pool, clienteling, replenishment, and a customer record that follows the shopper across channels.
Order orchestration across marketplaces, fulfilment routing, returns economics, and customer lifetime value rather than order-level thinking.
Lot control and shelf life, route delivery, temperature and compliance records, and the pricing complexity that comes with promotions and deductions.
Deep catalogue management, customer-specific part numbers, quoting from availability, and vendor-managed inventory arrangements.
Multi-client inventory segregation, activity-based billing, service level reporting, and integration with each client's systems on their terms.
The return here is dominated by working capital and error cost. Inventory accuracy and visibility let you carry less stock at the same service level, which releases cash directly. Order accuracy removes the compounding cost of a wrong shipment: the freight, the return, the credit, the re-pick and the customer goodwill nobody puts a number on. Then margin visibility by customer and channel, which typically reveals that a meaningful slice of the customer base is served at a loss once true cost to serve is included. That last one is uncomfortable and usually the most valuable.
Distribution suffers a particular pattern: a capable ERP, a separate commerce platform, a warehouse system and a set of spreadsheets holding the pricing logic that nobody dares move.
Order management, inventory, procurement, pricing and the financial ledger. In distribution this system is the business, and the cost of it being wrong compounds through every downstream process.
Directed putaway and picking, wave planning, packing, shipping integration and cycle counting. Where accuracy is either created or destroyed — usually by how long a transaction takes on a scanner.
The channels customers actually order through. The critical requirement is that they draw from one inventory pool and one price list, not from a nightly snapshot that is wrong by lunchtime.
Customer relationships, contract pricing, rebate and deduction management, quoting and service. Frequently the least systematised area, and often where the margin leakage is.
Four recurring problems, with the outcome the leadership team is really asking for.
Available-to-promise is calculated from a stale snapshot, so orders are accepted against inventory that is already committed, damaged or physically missing. The customer finds out after they were told yes.
The outcome leaders ask forReal-time availability across every location, with committed, in-transit and on-hand quantities in one number the sales desk can promise from safely.Customer-specific pricing, contract terms, rebates and promotions have accreted over years. Quotes are checked manually, errors are found by customers, and the rebate accrual is an estimate.
The outcome leaders ask forPricing and contract terms held as maintainable data with proper approval, so every channel quotes correctly and rebates are accrued from actual transactions.Gross margin by product is known. Cost to serve — the small orders, the special handling, the returns, the freight, the credit terms — is not, so accounts that consume disproportionate resource look profitable on paper.
The outcome leaders ask forMargin by customer, product and channel including cost to serve, so commercial decisions about accounts and terms are made on the real number.The webstore, the sales desk and the stores hold different inventory, different pricing and different customer records. The customer experiences the seams and finance reconciles them afterwards.
The outcome leaders ask forOne order pool, one price list, one customer record across every channel, with fulfilment routed by cost and availability rather than by which channel took the order.In distribution these four compound. Bad availability data causes bad promises, which cause expedited freight, which destroys the margin that the pricing spreadsheet was never accurately measuring in the first place. These four compound
We baseline from your existing fill rate, inventory turns and error data before agreeing any target.
Working capital released at equal or better service level
Achievable with scanning and directed picking
Improvement from real-time availability and better replenishment
Reduction where pricing and availability are automatic
By customer, product and channel including cost to serve
Shared across every sales channel in real time
How to read these: How to read these: the figures above are typical ranges we plan and measure against, not guarantees. In your first engagement we agree the baseline, the target and the measurement method in writing, then report against them.
Order-to-cash is the usual entry point, because it touches every one of the problems above.
The commercial spine: order capture from every channel, real availability, allocation, fulfilment, invoicing and collection.
Where accuracy is made: scanning, directed work and a mobile experience fast enough that people actually use it properly.
The analysis layer: what each customer, product and channel really contributes once cost to serve is included.
Implementation, extension, support and integration across Supply Chain, Finance, Commerce and the customer applications — joined so every channel draws on the same truth.
Environment design, data migration, configuration, testing and go-live for the Dynamics 365 applications your operation actually needs — to a fixed price and a fixed date. In distribution that means a cutover planned around your seasonal peak, with inventory reconciled and a fallback that does not involve stopping shipments.
Where the standard product stops short, we extend it with model-driven apps, Power Apps, Power Automate flows and custom tables rather than bolting on a separate system. Pricing rules, rebate structures and allocation logic are configured as data your commercial team maintains, because pricing changes weekly and change requests do not.
Managed application support after go-live: a named team, an agreed response time, release management for Microsoft's twice-yearly waves, and a backlog we work through with you. Warehouse-hours coverage, including the shift pattern you actually run. An order entry outage at 6am is a shipping problem by 9am.
Connecting Dynamics 365 to the systems you are keeping — with monitored, re-runnable interfaces and a documented contract for every field that moves. EDI trading partners, carrier and shipping systems, marketplaces, e-commerce platforms and supplier feeds — monitored, re-runnable and reconciled daily.
One inventory pool is the single most important design decision in a multi-channel distribution build. If the webstore reads a nightly snapshot, you will be overselling by mid-morning — and no amount of process discipline downstream will fix an availability number that was wrong at the point of promise.
What each application genuinely contributes in a distribution business.
The operational core: multi-site inventory with real available-to-promise, advanced warehouse management with directed work and scanning, demand forecasting, and purchase planning that accounts for lead time and supplier reliability.
Invoicing, collections, rebate and deduction accounting, and the dimensional reporting to see margin by customer, product, channel and warehouse without exporting anything.
Quoting against live availability and correct contract pricing, account planning, and the visibility that stops two people working the same customer with different numbers.
Case management for order issues, returns authorisation, claims and credit disputes — with the full order and shipment history visible on first contact rather than requested from another department.
Receiving inspection, damage and shortage reporting, vendor scorecards, route delivery capture and proof of delivery — built as mobile apps for the people actually moving stock.
One inventory pool is the single most important design decision in a multi-channel distribution build. If the webstore reads a nightly snapshot, you will be overselling by mid-morning — and no amount of process discipline downstream will fix an availability number that was wrong at the point of promise.
The process documentation and the warehouse are rarely the same thing. We start in the warehouse.
We follow an order from capture to cash, including a return and a short shipment, and watch what really happens.
We agree outcomes with commercial, operations and finance together, with the metric definitions written down.
We prototype order capture, availability and pricing, and test them against last month's real order file.
We build, integrate, migrate and train, with cutover planned well clear of your seasonal peak.
We measure fill rate, accuracy, turns and margin against the baseline, then tune.
We replay a real historical period through the configured system before go-live. If it cannot reproduce last month's orders, pricing and margin, the design is not finished — and finding that out in testing costs a fraction of finding it out in production.
Distribution is unforgiving of consultants who have never stood in a warehouse at the end of a shift.
Not in the headline gross margin, but in freight, returns, small orders, rebate accruals and the cost of serving accounts nobody has examined in years. We instrument those first.
If a putaway transaction is slow on a handheld, it will be worked around, and inventory accuracy dies. Warehouse usability is treated as a hard requirement, not a preference.
EDI, marketplaces, carriers, e-commerce platforms and supplier feeds integrated properly, with monitoring, so a failed feed is caught by us before a customer notices.
Warehouse networks, scanners, the ERP and the managed service from one accountable team — because when picking stops, nobody has time to establish whose problem it is.
Two illustrative engagements showing the shape of the work.
Four warehouses each planned independently and each carried its own safety stock. Nobody could see stock held elsewhere, so shortages were bought around rather than transferred.
The webstore read a nightly inventory file. Overselling was routine on popular lines, and the resulting cancellations were damaging the ratings the business depended on.
Practical pieces on inventory, margin and multi-channel operations.
How to build a defensible cost-to-serve model from data you already have, and what it usually reveals.
Read moreThe relationship between inventory accuracy, visibility and working capital — with the arithmetic worked through.
Read moreA short technical piece on real-time availability and the order orchestration patterns that hold up under load.
Read moreSend us an anonymised order file and your pricing rules for one customer segment. We will build a working demo of order capture, availability and pricing for that flow, using your product data, and walk your commercial and operations leads through it.
Describe the situation in your own words.
