Copilot for Inventory Optimization

Having accurate data regarding your inventory is the bare minimum. Optimizing how that inventory is stored, shipped, and handled across your distribution network is the secret sauce that leads to big improvements in supply chain operations, and those improvements have an outsized impact on overall profits.

According to Ernst & Young, an estimated 50-75% of the cost of doing business is influenced directly by the supply chain. This means that savings in supply chain operations have a big impact on the bottom line. In fact, reducing supply chain costs by just 5% can result in doubling profits in some situations.

Once you’ve instituted policies and standardized processes across your organization, what else can you do? The goal is to make sure materials and goods get where they need to be with as little disruption as possible. In today’s technology landscape, reaching that goal efficiently means you need to bring next-generation AI to your supply chain.

Copilot by Microsoft represents the next wave of innovation in supply chain management, and it can have a profound impact on inventory optimization. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) that works with Microsoft 365 Dynamics supply chain management streamlines necessary but time-consuming processes and works like an assistant who knows your business inside and out.

Copilot and Inventory Optimization

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot offers CSCOs and other supply chain professionals something new: artificial intelligence (AI) designed to be the perfect supply chain assistant. This innovation can:

• Mitigate risk
• Provide in-depth analysis and predictive insights
• Handle some communications, such as sending vendors alerts

Using Copilot means a smoother, more tightly optimized supply chain operation even in a world characterized by disruption and rapid change. Although Copilot offers numerous benefits for the whole supply chain, in this post, we’re going to consider just one area: inventory optimization.

Process Automation

Managing your supply chain means managing a multitude of different processes, many of them tedious and prone to human error, and making sure they all work together. Purchase orders, receivables, order fulfillment, scheduling, and other similar processes are simple enough on their own, but when combined they become a complex web.

When those kinds of processes are automated, fewer errors happen, and that results in cost savings, more on-time deliveries, and overall improvement in supply chain operations. It’s the difference between typing every inventory number in by hand and using RFID, but multiplied across your whole operation.

Automation is good, but automation that is powered by natural language processing (NLP) is better. With Copilot, supply chain operators can ask questions, in normal language and the system responds. “You can just ask questions about the inventory in natural language, which is a lot quicker and easier than having to get with IT to build a report,” says Daryl Moll, Velosio’s Copilot expert.

Inventory Visibility

Along with the ability to automate processes such as entering information from purchase orders or other common repetitive tasks, Copilot provides unprecedented inventory visibility. You know what you have and where it is.

Tracking and managing inventory across multiple locations and selling channels is one of the challenges of supply chain management. Accuracy is crucial, and Dynamics 365 offers tools that provide real-time tracking, but Copilot enhances and simplifies that functionality.

Shorter Warehouse Inventory Cycle Times

Goods have to be stored, but shorter warehouse cycle times are better. Using Copilot can help shorten the time it takes for goods to be received, picked, packed, and shipped—while maintaining accuracy and global inventory visibility.

Reducing manual and isolated processes reduces errors like duplication and inconsistencies. Copilot brings all of your different systems together, and gives you a real-time view of your warehouse inventory cycle. With clear, accurate, easily accessible information, you can make better business decisions.

Awareness and Communication

One of the most challenging aspects of supply chain operations in the current environment is dealing with unpredictable events. Weather, natural disasters, strikes, pandemics, shortages, and other disruptions require agility and resilience. One of the most useful aspects of Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center is the ability to mitigate potential disruptions.

The AI enabled program pulls information from outside sources, such as news stories about on-going situations that could potentially disrupt your supply chain operations, and alerts you. If a critical shipment must be rerouted due to a weather event, you’re going to know about the possibility before it actually happens.

Further, the program can then alert your vendors and partners, so they remain cognizant of possible disruptions or aware of changes that are occurring due to external events. The AI powered program composes emails for you to review, saving time and preventing lapses in communication.

Planning and Demand Forecasting

Copilot assists with planning and demand forecasting, bringing together an enormous amount of data to deliver predictive insights that would otherwise require hours of research and analysis. Historical data, inventory assessments, sales data, information from outside sources, labor data, KPIs, and other pertinent information all go into Copilot’s analysis automatically.

The result goes beyond anything an algorithm could produce. Accurate forecasting provides a solid foundation for business decisions. You don’t need to fuss with 12 dashboards or ask for a report to be generated, either. Copilot makes planning more accurate and less risky.

Intelligent Document Planning

Supply chain operators can use data extracted from receipts, purchase orders, invoices, and so on, in order to precisely carry out resource planning. Copilot automatically pulls the data from documents. The use of an ERP is the beginning of optimizing your supply chain, bringing next-generation AI into your operations represents entirely new levels of clarity and innovation.

“Making that connection to other data sources and other systems and environments…and the ability to interact with it through Copilot” is a powerful tool, according to Moll. Velosio is positioned to help build those connections.

Ready to Level Up?

Velosio is happy to be your partner in bringing the future into the present. Next-generation AI is disruptive innovation. Soon, those organizations using it will have an undeniable edge compared to those still using manual processes.

Contact us today to learn how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot can optimize your inventory management and streamline your supply chain operations.