 Welcome, good afternoon. My name is Cheryl Tipps and I'm here from FreedomWorks and welcome to series three systems and productivity of our Recover and Rise series. Now, for those of you who've been here all through the series, you'll know that obviously the series four has jumped on, but we're just going to revisit this particular webinar from series three and Hayden Winters has kindly joined us today to talk about stock and inventory and what to do to get that online and how to make your business more productive. So before I introduce Hayden, here we are online stock and inventory optimization, which is where we are today. And, as I say, Hayden is going to be talking to us about exploring the benefits of an online system to help you manage your stock. Before Hayden starts, however, as always, it's just important to say that the Recover and Rise webinars are all brought to you by West Sasse's local authority with Coaster Capital LEP. And part of the project really is also to support businesses in the area and to make sure that you have access to funding and to funding support. So on the screen at the moment, you've got three resources that are offering funding, grant funding, business, hot house and churches, there's an absolute wealth of funding, workshops, business guidance and you know, get in touch with them and have a look, there's the website address there, low case, the low carbon across the southeast is an EU funded project helping businesses adapt to climate change and promoting opportunities. So again, if that's something that is relevant for your company, have a look at low case and rise is a knowledge exchange with the universities. Again, very important if you're if you're bringing out a new product to market or making You know, to make connections and solve some challenges. So three support offerings there. We've also got our With me, my slides have actually jammed. That doesn't happen very often. We've also got our digital champions, which as You know, because you're taking part in this webinar, you are entitled to eight hours of free fully funded support with our digital business consultants. That is fully funded by the Coast of Capital Growth Hub and we've got a team of actually seven strong digital experts. So regardless of what your issue is, or I don't want to call it a problem challenge, let's call it a challenge. We've got seven digital champions that could help you and you can apply for a full day. Now that day can be taken over a month. It doesn't have to be one day at, you know, a whole day, because I think that would make any business owner fairly scared given up a whole day. You can spit it out. But if you would like to take that up, all you need to do again is get in touch with Coast of Capital and there's a contact form. It's a very, very simple application. It's a quick follow up to understand what your needs are. And then they will signpost you to a relevant digital champion. Now all of our slides, this session has been recorded and all of our slides are going to be obviously part of that recording. So you can access that email to get in touch with Coast of Capital for the digital champions. So that that is there for you. So please do have a think about whether that would be relevant for your business and any grant funding that would also be relevant for your business. So without further ado, I will stop my screens and introduce Hayden Winters from Carpenter Box, who, as I say, is going to talk to us today about online stock and inventory. If you have any questions during the webinar, please pop them in the chat and we will have 10 minutes at the end just to go through questions. So over to you, Hayden. Perfect. Thanks, Cheryl, for that introduction. And thanks everyone for coming along today. So Cheryl has mentioned this, you're probably very well aware at this point. We're going to be looking at stock and inventory and how to get the best out of software to manage this process as efficiently as possible. So, OK. What I'm going to talk about first is what do we mean by inventory management? I find it's very important to define exactly what we're looking at automating and streamlining first. So if you think about inventory management, we might just be talking about where you store the inventory, how you send out your inventory, maybe, but most people tend to just think about where they're storing and how they're holding it and keeping track of it. But the inventory management process actually is so much broader than that and includes not only the manufacturing or the purchasing, the logistics, so how you're getting that stock and transporting it across the globe or how you're transporting it across from your local supplier and manufacturer through the storage process, the warehousing side, the sales and fulfilment, and then the customer service side. So all of these individual components make up the entire inventory management process. And it's really important to look at how we can connect these up as efficiently as possible, utilising either software or processes. And now that's probably the key takeaway is looking at all of these in conjunction with each other. So when we talk about inventory management, the type of ways that we can hold inventory are broken down into three key areas, three key areas that a lot of businesses tend to work with. So I'd like to highlight initially that you don't have to use one or these. You can use them in conjunction with each other. So we've got manufacturing and warehousing. We have consignment and we have drop shipping. So manufacturing and warehousing, when I categorise inventory management using that method, what we're talking about is you are able to either manufacture the inventory yourself. You outsource the manufacturing of the products to somewhere else and you bring that in-house and you're storing it in a facility. So either you've manufactured it yourself or you've purchased the stock in and you're holding it and are in control of that. You own the stock and you're responsible for storing it and fulfilling it. We then have consignment and consignment is if you're not familiar, but hopefully consignment is where you're holding the stock. You don't legally own it until you've sold it and then you pay the supply for that stock. You may store it and quite often you might hold if you've got a return environment or brick and mortar store, you'll hold that. But it's not necessarily always the case where you're physically in control of the stock, but more often than not, you tend to be. And then we have drop shipping. So drop shipping is a more, I say it's the newer version of this and this is where you store your supplier or at an external third party warehousing environment and you use their fulfilment services and they send it directly from their fulfilment service to your customer. So I've got some benefits and drawbacks of each and I'm just going to go through those each individually now and then talk about sort of why you would choose one or the other, what sort of environments work. So where you've got manufacturing warehousing, what you're talking about here is you have complete control over the quality and the cost. And when I say that, what I mean is you're able to physically hold the stock, you've purchased the stock at a price, you've agreed or you've manufactured the cost and you're able to really be in charge of that quality. So you own the stock, you're responsible for purchasing it and that is a really, really important trait. I'll explain why relatives here this soon. You have self directed fulfilment. So you are completely in charge or responsible of the actual fulfilment and storage options available. So how you pack the warehouse, how you pack your storage environment, whether that is a warehouse or a garage or the living room, you're completely responsible for that. That obviously comes with things like insurance, making sure that that is secured safely from potential theft or weather damage. These sorts of environments, as we start to scale up, tend to require heavy investment. So maybe your living room or garage is not much of a big deal except for a little bit of a space that's taken away from you. But often actually, if we're talking about a warehouse or a storage facility, to hold large quantities of stock actually is quite an expensive exercise to do. So it depends on what you're selling, how big the space is, what space it requires, where you're shipping it to. But more than that, it's actually quite an expensive, expensive process to hold on stock. You've got inefficient storage optimisation there. So when I say that, there are some really, really fancy and very expensive inventory storage tools and systems available. And they're great because you can really optimise the space you have in a warehouse or the space you have in an environment, but they are incredibly expensive for these really high tech, high, these very complicated mechanisms. And more often than not, a lot of businesses and I would say the majority of businesses do struggle with making the best use of the space. So I've been into a few warehouses where things are stacked up to the ceiling, but they need to get something out from the ceiling. It becomes a whole effort and it's big, big exercise. So holding stock yourself can actually become quite an expensive and difficult thing to do. And you've got natural limitations. So if you've got a shed or somewhere you're storing the stock, you've got a natural capacity that you have to reach or you should be reaching. So, you know, trying to make the best of that space and what stock you're storing where and those sorts of things that can become quite a difficult process to manage. When we look at consignment stock, it's very useful. This is often done where we've got stock, perhaps that is more expensive. So this is quite often done with pieces of art or antiques. So more sort of complicated, I'd say, more sort of expensive items. And the reason why that's so beneficial in consignment is so beneficial is you're not actually paying for the stock you're selling until you've already sold it. And that's really helpful for a smaller business who maybe doesn't necessarily have the cash and the investment in to buy stock, to buy large quantities. So holding stock on consignment is a really, really great idea to do that, to sort of save on outlaying a large chunk of cash. So we're not paying for so moving stock items. And this is a real key feature of consignment that I really like. More often than not, if you think of a large retail store, they'll hold hundreds and thousands of items across multiple different retail shops. And if one item doesn't sell in one, it's likely it's not going to sell in others. And you end up holding loads of spending a lot of time and space, spending a lot of money and taking up a lot of space of these stock items that aren't really doing anything I aren't selling. So if, for example, you've got a few pieces on consignment or some more expensive items and they're really not they're really not selling, people aren't buying them, depending on the sort of contract you have with that supplier, you don't have to pay for it and just have it sitting there. So you don't have any cash tied up in it, which means you can go, actually, this isn't selling. Let me go and go back to my supplier and take that away, I guess, or not sell that anymore. So it's really a sort of a less risky side of stock management and ownership. Because of the consignment nature, you can work with a large number of suppliers. You don't have to worry about sourcing, manufacturing, developing anything. It's very easy because often if you've worked with those different suppliers on consignment, you don't have to set up payment terms with them. You don't have to set up particular arrangement or credit limit. So it's a very easy way to diversify your product range. Some limitations on this. If you're not owning the stock, you don't have control of the cost. So whatever the cost is that you've been given, you ultimately have to pay that. So if, for example, you have a piece of stock that works and turns around very, very quickly and you're selling that item at a really, really high rate that the consignment supplier or the supplier increases that cost, you're going to be faced with a bit of a struggle and a bit of a challenge here and trying to sell that and to make profit out of it. And naturally, you're paying for elements of storage and paying for elements of design and risk associated with consignment. So the stock tends to be a little bit more expensive to pay for. And then lastly, we've got supply issues listed there. So someone who sells stock in consignment may change that model. They may decide they're not supplying a manufacturing that component anymore or that that isam anymore. So you could potentially run into some issues where this differs, for example, from manufacturing warehousing. You're able to buy stock in large quantities if you know it sells, you know you're going to sell it and you're able to keep there and store it on hand. So if there is a chance that does become obsolete or stops being sold, you're able to buy in large quantities and manage that process a little bit more effectively. And lastly, drop shipping. So drop shipping is, as I mentioned, relatively new. So one of the big benefits of it is there's no warehousing and storage costs. So this is a really, really common inventory control method held by people who use and sell strictly online or e-commerce at sales channels. So where you've got your brick and mortar store retail stores, as we all know, you like to go in and see something and touch something, whereas if you're drop shipping and you're just selling on an e-commerce platform, no one's going to see a brick and mortar store, no one's going to see a shop. So you don't need to hold that. You don't need to show that. So you're able to pay a supplier or drop shipping facility to hold inventory for you. And then they deal with all the fulfillment of sales. So this has quite a few benefits. I'll talk about that in a second because I get quite excited about drop shipping, but potentially you have more market opportunities. So if, for example, you're wanting to sell in the United States or you want to sell across Europe, taking all the tax compliance issues out of it, actually what you end up being able to do is really diversify your market. So you're able to sell in the US by storing stock in the US and having it drop ship from a US supplier without necessarily having to go and find a storage facility, get that insured, get a team out there to complete the fulfillment. So you're able to leverage off a much bigger platform and much bigger third sort of third party. You do have a potential capacity restriction. So a drop ship and provider will have a storage area available. And as it's part of their business, you'd expect them to have ample space available, but depending on how you move the stock between your different locations, where you're storing the stock, how quickly it turns around, what the costs are, you can actually become quite a costly and I suppose a capacity inducing thing. So, you know, if you store all of your stock somewhere, you're contingent on on that being fulfilled and sold in those markets. So there's always just sort of risks as with all of these methods. And you have lots of control over fulfillment and quality. So, you know, the customer experience is really, really important. And if the drop shipping company is not fulfilling the orders correctly, they use maybe a poor delivery method. You know, the customer services and create, they can't find just stock. They're not turning around quickly enough. Those can cause issues. So that's out of your control. So the reason why a lot of smaller businesses are using drop shipping as opposed to the other methods is because it's much easier to, your fulfillment is being leveraged off an existing platform. So an existing existing platform and existing business where they've got the warehouse and facilities, they've got the processes, they've got the inventory control methods and what you're actually doing is going, well, you're doing that better than I am. So I'm going to pay you for doing this. Now you can use or manufacture your own stock, send that to a third party logistics company or a drop shipping fulfillment company and undertake that. But actually this method is really, really is quite prevalent, especially in the last couple of years of really, really increased. And we're seeing more of our clients for sure utilising drop shipping as opposed to utilising warehousing and storing stock in their own in their own backyards, so to speak. So why is inventory management and why do those three different types of inventory management and what sort of problems do we tend to find when it comes to actually looking after and controlling and managing our inventory? So being an accountant, I have got a financial element in here, but I'm going to talk a little bit about the operational first and some of the implications of what happens, what we're trying to avoid when it comes to poor inventory management practice. So our operational issues are order management. So if you're selling in a brick and mortar store, you have an e-commerce platform, maybe you have a B2B style arrangement, so a wholesale kind of sales channel trying to consolidate, trying to keep all of your orders together, understanding how quickly you need to turn those around, understanding whether or not you have a stock available. That's really, really important to understand, to fulfil those orders and to turn these orders around quickly. As we know, we tend to be a society these days that dictates and likes very things to be on very quickly. So we need to kind of have an up-to-date and easy way for customers to engage with us, but also an easy way to understand what are our outstanding orders and what do we need to do and how do we turn them around quickly? So the next one is understanding of stock availability. So this is huge when it comes to wholesale opportunities. It's also important for retail environments. If we are selling something we don't have and our stock has a really long lead time, we end up actually causing more of an issue than we're doing. So we're over-promising and under-delivering, which isn't exactly what we want to be doing when it comes to our high-paced retail environment. So we need to understand what stock is available, where is it stored, how long is it going to take for me to ship that somewhere. And it really is a transparency issue. You know, you don't want to be going into a wholesale agreement or arrangement, not knowing if you're able to fulfil their order that they're expecting to be able to dish out in two or three days. So we really need to understand exactly what stock we have and where it is. So I've got supplier lead times outsourcing and materials manufacturing. So I put them together just because we need to understand if we're importing a particular item initially with the supply chain shortages we've had recently. Cool, OK. So, yeah, we're looking at these sort of... Oh, hello, can you hear me? Yeah, we're trying it out a little bit. I just want to start that. Yeah, you're OK now, brilliant. OK, excellent. OK, perfect. Sorry about that, everyone. OK, so when we talk about the supply and tier is how are we sourcing, how long does it take? You know, if we're taking a really large order in, do we have a lot, you know, do we have the time to get the stock in to fulfil the order? You know, if we're manufacturing something and it's going to take, you know, two months for something to arrive, but where it was sort of promised to one month to turn around, you know, we're going to have an issue here. So operationally, poor inventory management can really, really stifle of the orders. So we've got our supply chain issues I've mentioned before. There's kind of as a cut out, so I'm not sure I know businesses recently who perhaps have been used to it quite a quick and easy in coming of goods. So, you know, do we have an awareness of the lead times it takes? Do we have a process to understand that? Do we know how much capacity we've got to manufacture? Do we know what we can bring in? So and we talk about the effective utilisation of storage and warehousing capacity. So, you know, if we're not really thinking about receiving goods or where they're stored, if we're trying to fill orders, it can become a bit cumbersome to do so if we're having to rummage through loads of different boxes or different sections of warehouse equally. So, you know, if we've got incoming orders, do we have the right amount of capacity and do we have a right amount of process to store them effectively or do we not? You know, do we need to find a short term storage solution? Do we not? You know, do we need to stop the order? Do we need to send it somewhere else? All these things are important for proper inventory management. And now the financial implications. So when we are inefficient with our inventory management, we can end up actually holding very, very large quantities of stock that's very, very expensive to the business. So if you think about the cash lover business and when we're looking at what we're spending our money on, if we're holding large quantities of stock, we're trying to, on that basis, as we're trying to make money. We're trying to sell that. Is she think we're doing that? When we hold large stock, we have large quantities of inventory on cash in this inventory and in this business. And what it means is we're unable to necessarily sell something quicker unless we reduce the price on it. So, you know, as an account by background, we're looking at how affected quantities of stock, because we shouldn't be doing that. You know, there are some instances where if you're a really, really large retailer, you could be holding a decent amount of stock in terms of quantity and value. But if that stock turns around very, very quickly, what we're not to do is just be aware of, we just need to be aware of, of that inventory management process and how we're holding it and storing it. So if we've got slow turnaround time on orders because of our poor inventory management process, this can lead to cancellations, this can lead to refunds, which are financial direct financial implications. But more importantly, especially, you know, I would say relatively recently where we're having quite a few issues. Yes. Hayden, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt your flow, but we keep going in and out. We've got slightly patchy internet. I wonder whether it's worth as much as we love to see in your lovely face, whether it's worth you turning your video off and seeing whether that actually makes it better just for five minutes and then see if we can work like that and then try again in a minute. Would that be OK? OK. And it's frozen again. I'm really sorry, everybody, we seem to be dropping in and out. I don't know if it's the same for everybody, but on my screen, we're sort of dropping in and out. So perhaps when Hayden comes back, if he can turn his video off, it might help. I'd love to be able to carry on with the slides, but unfortunately I know very little about this subject. Hayden, can you hear us? Are you there? OK. I'm really sorry. He seems that Hayden's actually dropped out completely. So if we just give it a few minutes and sure he'll actually pop back in now, hi, you're you come in as well. There's nothing worse is them and you get the technical glitches that we're all so used to with Zoom now. But what I suspect has happened is that Hayden has dropped off. He's probably going to do a really quick reboot and then he'll be back with us. And here he comes. Looks as if he's coming. I now know how those news presenters feel on BBC Radio BBC TV or what have you, and they have to kind of fluff a little bit. Yeah, it's like, right, we need to do a quick pub quiz while Hayden comes back. Yeah, apologies about that. I don't know what happened there. That's going to be it. I'm going to storm out of here after the presentation and find out what's caused that. So I do apologise, everyone. That's OK. You're ready to rock and roll again. Brilliant. I will turn my camera off and let's go again. Thanks, Hayden. No worries. I'm going to keep my camera off just, I think, to it's not risky. OK, that's fine. Thank you. So. Slow turn around time on orders and leading to cancellations and refunds. So. You know, we have a direct financial implication there where where our orders are being stopped or refunded. And more recently, we have an issue that comes in relation to sort of, I suppose, public perception. You know, we've got reviews and we don't want to sort of have, you know, it was taken two months to complete and fulfil an order. You know, we're trying to do things as quickly and efficiently as possible. And sometimes that can mean actually we're ending up in a bit of an issue as far as the business goes. So there's a financial impact and a guess of reputational impact with that one as well. So this one's quite a dramatic sentence, but nevertheless, logistics nightmares can skyrocket costs and squeeze your margins. So if we're trying to bring in a piece of fabric, for example, if we're trying to bring in something from overseas, if it is much more expensive to bring this in either by the shipping cost, the lead time, whatever this may be, you know, we might find are actually paying more for the individual product itself because that business is also affected by a slug pie chain issue. So that becomes increasing, more expensive to actually buy what we're importing. But more importantly, the actual costs of getting it delivered and fulfilling this maybe, you know, to receive stock in, but also actually to externalise and to actually fill that order and complete that order. So this means that our margins can get squeezed and what we thought was a relatively profitable item to sell actually ends up completely, completely squeezing that and becoming still important, perhaps, but the profit we're expecting to make isn't going to cover our cover our costs. So how technology can optimize your inventory management. So, you know, I've talked a lot about kind of the scares and the process and a lot of that today. And it's really important to talk about that because we need to understand where technology can fit in to make that a best process. So imagery management loads of different areas. So we're looking at the order management, the tracking, the stock, where do we get our sales from, how many sales channels do we have and we need to make sure that we're operating that in the most effective way possible. So where technology can provide a lot of assistance is around automation, visibility and looking at everything completely and totally. So we talked a little bit about the sort of fulfilment side of the imagery management and the costings. So, you know, regardless of what inventory method you choose, we're going to need to find some way to track and manage that. So if we think about, you know, on the sort of incoming stock and place in the order, what we need to be able to identify and look at is how much stock, how many raw materials or individual items I'm looking to sell, do we have, whatever our current sort of run rates, what's our order coming in? Do we have, you know, orders that we're going to be able to fulfil? Do we need to purchase more? What is our lead time? How am I engaging with my suppliers and by bringing them up and my emailing them? Am I entering in and purchase directly into their system? My manufacturing, you know, do I have an understanding of how much raw materials I have? And then we look at that that's the purchasing logistics initial sort of inbound side. Then we look at the actual storage side. So where is my stock? How much stock do I have at a certain location? Maybe this is for insurance, insurance purposes. You know, where, where is it? How am I going to get it from one place another? So that's the sort of the storage side, the warehousing side. Then we look at the sales channels. So where are my orders coming from? You know, just my website reflect accurately how many items I've got available. So all of these different components form sort of integrity together to form a complete imagery management system. Then as we look out, what's our outbound freight? How are we fulfilling these orders? You know, are we sending freight parcels to United States? What's the most cost effective way of doing that? Which which supplier is the easiest way? So all of these questions can be answered by inventory systems or systems that surround that. But ultimately, you know, we will, it's much more efficient to do it this way than it is to do it manually. So if you think about the number of calls, enquiries, how you track your orders now, you're not sort of using technology to help do that, and I don't include Excel as technology. By the way, because that's the confused rise version of pen and paper. So we need to kind of look at how we can how we can streamline that and make that better. So I've listed on here some apps that we've used, engaged with, dealt with before that have sort of roughly organised from the cheapest to the more expensive. So the left hand side being the cheapest, the right being the more expensive. And these are different types of apps that manage and track inventory or complete the fulfilment side or track sales channels. So there's quite a few on there and they all do specific things. You don't need all of them. So, for example, MRP easy dear systems unleashed and since seven will do relatively the same thing. But alas, you wouldn't ever want to say they were exactly the same and for all these suitable businesses. Likewise, we have a ship station and ship it, which are fulfilments outward based fulfilment, zero, which is an accounting platform, which has a really simple inventory management solution in there. I say that it is very simple, but it is designed for that purpose. And then we have Shopify, which is an e-commerce platform, amongst many others. So you're very familiar with e-commerce platforms now. Probably Shopify, e-commerce, Amazon, e-bay, those sort of platforms as they all encompass e-commerce platforms. So when I look at the what what a full supply process looks like, it looks something like this. And it's a bit of a rudimentary slide and it's a bit of a basic slide, but I think it conveys a message adequately. So what we have is our supplier in the top left. So within DEAR, as an example, so this could be replaced with Unleashed, it could be replaced with Syn7. What we're able to do is engage with our supplier by raising a purchase order based on a database that has all of our all of our skews, all of our products, all of our purchase costs. We're able to raise a purchase order, send that to a supplier. We're able to enter in the lead time for that. So we know roughly what we've got on order, what we've got on hand, what our turnaround, what our lead time is for that stock. And then what we're able to do is understand roughly when it's going to arrive, you know, are we going to be able to meet out our orders, our order capacity and are we going to be able to fill those on time? So we're able to see that. So our supplier also, when we receive a purchase order and receive our goods, we're able to book them into the system. We're able to receive them. We're able to put them away in a location, a particular subsection of a location. So it's very, very integrated. One of the sort of a high level, I suppose, utopia situation. So Syn7, one of the softwares I mentioned on the previous screens, the one on the bottom right, that has something called EDI. And I believe DIR actually might have it as well. An EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange. And what that effectively means is that I'm able to connect my inventory system with a supplier or with a customer and they're able to place orders. And I'm able to place orders and update my inventory in real time. So it's a it's a very, very integrated system. It's very expensive to set up. So I might spend too much time talking about it now. But an ideal system where you're able to see what's available, they're able to see what's available and you're able to interact with customers directly rather than having to submit an order, process it and then put it into the system. So it's definitely the utopia angle of the system. What we're looking at is on the left hand side, we've got Shopify. So where we've got Shopify, this is what our website's based on, we're able to place orders on there. We're able to to look at having different discounts on there. So it's a very, very complicated e-commerce platform. There's more than just discounts, but we're able to look at different products, different availabilities. Now, we can not only send these orders to an inventory system, but we're actually able to do is to send the availability of those inventory, those products to back up onto the e-commerce platform. So if you're if you're selling something and it's running out of stock, you're able to have low stock alert, low stock warnings. You're able to actually say we're out of stock and removed from the website. You're able to say it's out of stock, but keep it on the website. There's much more of a much more, I suppose, varied options when it comes to handling and processing that e-commerce side when you've got it integrated with an imagery management system. So this is great because if I'm doing wholesale orders and I'm processing wholesale orders and I'm raising invoices for for thousands or hundreds of different quantities, it's going to let me know that if that's the same stock I'm selling on my website and therefore it's now out of stock, it's going to update on the e-commerce platform as well. When we look at ship station, we're talking about fulfilment. So when we look at this, we're going to all of the orders that are in our in our imagery system are going to be sent across into a fulfilment platform. Now that fulfilment platform will be able to get quotes and estimates based on weights that is entered into the inventory system to work out how best and what the most cost effective way to to fulfil those orders are. So whether or not it's Royal Mail or Hermes or one of those delivery platforms. So we're able to work that out, we're able to purchase preferred fulfilment companies and we're able to provide shipping numbers, sorry, tracking numbers, shipping notifications to our customers. Lastly, we've got the accounting element, which is how all of the imagery, the sales orders, the stock purchases, all of that is sent across into, pardon me, sent across into zero or another accounting system, which means that our accounting is always up to date and we don't have to re key or re enter anything in. So this is what a fully optimised sort of, I would say, top tier inventory management system looks like. You've got loads of different components integrated together. Now when we look at this, if we say, well, what is the what is the alternative to this? So let's just say we didn't have an inventory system. We need to email or phone or however we engage with our supplier, log into their system, maybe. We need to place an order with them when we get it. We need to write down or put in an Excel or put in some, you know, let's just say manual process and effort here. We then need to have an e-commerce platform if we've got one of those machining we do need to update the quantities on there manually. We need to list the products as is available again. Then when we have an order, we have to take that order, print it out. Probably is the most common way I've seen. Fulfill the order, then we need to go and go on to Royal Mail, maybe, or we need to go on to DPD or whoever it is. Get a quote for the shipping, work out if that's what you want to do, print a label and then go and fulfill that. So you end up doing a lot more manual processes, which is which is fine to a degree. But what it doesn't do is just doesn't really give you that kind of slip slipstream style inventory processing. So, you know, the smaller number of orders you have, the easier it is to handle with the manual process. But often with these things, you know, you can you can have quite a few orders very, very quickly. And inventory and inventory management is one of those things that it takes a while to implement and a while to get together and integrate your systems. So actually what you end up doing is kind of piecemealing something together, which doesn't really work, doesn't really work for the business and really does cause quite a few complications because it is so integral to your business. You know, we talked about what happens when inventory management doesn't really go well. And this ultimately is a reflection of that. So, again, the kind of things that you look at at integrating at some point on managing and dealing with say Shopify, for example, we can integrate straight into an accounting platform. We can also put, you know, a fulfilment platform on top of that e-commerce platform as well. So we don't necessarily need to have an inventory management solution, but having that really does does increase that whole process and make that a little bit more streamlined, particularly where we have multiple sales channels. And that's kind of the avenue we're talking about. So what do I need to do to get started? And I think this is the big part. So inventory management is definitely not the cheapest software and systems to implement. They definitely are much more complicated than a professional services firm or a software firm or whatever that may be. So there are going to be some software costs. But what we really need to look at is inventory management in terms of keeping it online and keeping it streamlined is you need to actually have a process. You need to understand a lot of detail, you know, where you're buying your stock, how you're doing that. You know, is it manual on the phone and, you know, you emailing, for example, where are your manual processes, where are your electronic processes, where are your, you know, systems where you have systems that integrate, where do you not? You really need to detail that out and understand exactly what it is you're doing. What you then need to be able to do is go, well, actually, can we replace some of these manual processes with systems? How do we best, you know, what are we missing? What are we struggling? What are our customers saying we're missing? You know, what are our suppliers, you know, issues with dealing with us? Do we have issues? You know, are we able to fulfil orders on time? What are those sort of pain points that you're facing? And really understand, well, where do we go from here to address those? And integration is key in developing an online system and integrated system is fundamental. Really is to say, do we have a good e-commerce platform? Do we have a good fulfilment strategy? You know, how are we turning these orders around quickly enough? Do we understand what the lead times are for our suppliers? And really by doing that, you're going to come up with a foolproof way of managing your your business and your image management and online systems help. So, you know, we just at the previous slide, having all these systems in place really does help integrate and really automate the whole process. Now, as with all these things, you know, they're not always going to do everything for you. You're still going to have to be involved. Still going to have to make sure the systems are up to date. But what it does do is it means you're able to work remotely, you're able to not necessarily be sat down, printing out orders and, you know, for an environmental impact as well as an operational and I suppose even sanity impact as well. So really getting the best quotes and really making your business as efficient as possible e-commerce platforms, you're probably all selling on an e-commerce platform now, particularly the last couple of years have forced that, I think more than anything else. But really what we're trying to do is say, you know, how do we how do we have a e-commerce platform? How are we working with it? Are we getting the most out of it and or do we need something better? And how can we work that work that out? So really, really quickly, you've obviously got free access to some some advice and some grants available and there's loads of resource and support where obviously always available to help with and quite a few of these systems and structure these systems. So we can sort of help point you in the right direction if you need sort of help or guidance or sort of fully adapt the process. But again, you've got quite a bit of resource available and handy to you. I would say definitely map out the process and understand your process and then seek some help. I think bouncing ideas of people that have sort of effectively managed inventory processes and utilising systems is a really, really good way of not making any fundamental mistakes, not making sort of any errors, whilst errors are great learning opportunities. You know, the last thing you want to do is is cause a bit of an issue in your business when it comes to fulfilling or managing stock because that does that can quite a big impact on the business and how people interact with you, I guess. So. That's effectively I still have got to talk about today, so I believe we're going to have a few questions now or I believe we've got some questions there. We'll pass over to Cheryl now. Yep. Thank you, Hayden. Thank you. It was brilliant. Do you want to try and put your camera back on? See how we go? Let's give this a go. See if it works. Let me, there it is. My little bar wasn't appearing at the top. Let's see if we can make this work for the last 10 minutes. That would be really good. Yeah, we've got a few questions coming in. I'm sure you can see from the chat. Let me just let me just find where I was the first one. Bear with me. So with consignment stock, James has asked, do you think it tends to be more suited to already well established businesses to test stock demand and performance? Yes, definitely. I think I think it's great for a business who wants to diversify once off something different, but is is unsure. We often see it with with artwork or very expensive pieces where artwork is naturally very subjective, whether or not people like it or buy it. So that tends to be why that's the case. But certainly if you're wanting to try something different or you've got a supplier, maybe that's wanting to try a new product out with you. It can certainly be a way to test that waters before you're fully investing in something you're not sure is going to sell. Yeah, cool. And Lee's just asked how do businesses ensure and I think it's quite relevant, how do businesses ensure these days they're compliant with distant selling laws in countries they're drop shipping from? Is there any advice, are any best practice tips or anything that a company would need to be aware of? Yeah, I think the tax compliant, especially is really complicated when it comes to this and for no reason I can work out. Elas it is. So definitely when it comes to selling overseas and shipping items overseas, it's really important to understand whether or not you're expected to register for their local VAT or equivalent. So I know America particularly is a car crash when it comes to selling. If you're storing inventory there or shipping it over there, it's really frustrating with their sales tax. So there are some strategies and advice. You know, I suppose in the US, local advisors, tax advisors or fulfilment specialists can provide assistance with that. But certainly in the EU there's a fulfilment by Amazon, for example, was very, very common if you sell on Amazon and fulfilment by Amazon do a lot in terms of advising you where you need to record and when you need to report for that in other countries. So that's very, very handy. But definitely I see that. I definitely see that a lot of of businesses that are registering and dealing with the tax compliance, but there are also a lot of businesses that deal with that themselves. So, you know, it's not necessarily as complicated as it is that necessarily makes out to be. OK, thank you. Again, stock management, James is asking drop shipping can really help with last mile delivery, minimising shipping costs, delivery time, et cetera. But he's asking, do you see more platforms, options that can assist with multiple facility storage, distribution and management becoming a bigger part of supply chain system in coming years? Yeah, I think the big key here is the integration between different platforms and visibility. So trying to understand where stock can be moved between multiple different platforms, how we move it most effectively. It is a really complicated area just because of stock ownership insurance, the actual fulfilment of the process. So I think it's still a while away before it becomes so efficient that it's going to be an easy, simple kind of systemised process. But certainly I think that a lot of the, I suppose, specific 3PL, so third party logistics firms are really, really good at managing that process, similar to fulfilment by Amazon. They've got the systems there at a big scale, but certainly at a smaller scale that will come, no doubt, very, very quickly. Sure, sure. And just to finish up and obviously because we're sort of talking about SMEs and that sort of thing, what's the usual tipping point that you see a business moving to an automated system? Is there sort of, and I think you covered that slightly in your presentation anyway, but is there a minimum number of orders or a certain point that a business really should look at moving digital? Yeah, I think that my opinion is if I was to set up an inventory business tomorrow, I would want to have all of the kit available. Probably I wouldn't set it up tomorrow, but I would certainly be looking at that as a priority. And the only reason is is it does, it can landslide, have a landslide impact and very, very quickly require a lot of attention and focus. In terms of the minimum number of orders, if you're getting a steady stream of orders coming through from multiple different platforms and you're not trying to sort of pick the business up and really push it really, really hard. And I say that not as in you're not invested in making the business grow, but you're not trying to get those first few sales through the door. That's when I would say, look, you know, we want to make sure this is scalable and effective because we don't want to be printing out orders or, you know, printing out emails and trying to do that when we're the only one in the business and we're trying to make sales. It just becomes a bit convoluted to say, especially when it comes to an e-commerce platform, especially when it comes to a fulfilment platform. I think they're definitely the the ones to look at. And I think the inventory system, you know, where where it's becoming, you've got multiple sales channels, you've got multiple locations just during stock, you may be drop shipping, all these things that indicators that you probably should be looking at a highly integrated inventory management system. William. OK, fantastic. Thank you so much, Hayden. And Hayden's details are on the screen there. So if you do have any additional questions or queries, I'm sure that Hayden wouldn't mind an email. Is that OK? Yeah, absolutely. Get absolutely bombarded, but I'm sure Hayden wouldn't mind an email or two if you want to carry on that conversation. And do please remember, you know, there is that support there from the digital champions as well. So this is something that perhaps one of the digital champions could help with in the early stages just to sort of look at your business with you and see whether this is something that you need to be taking further. So all that really remains now for me to say is is a big thank you to Hayden and, you know, really appreciated that. And obviously, if anybody's got any questions or queries, please follow up with the Freedomworks team and we shall see you all again very, very shortly. There will be a recording of this webinar available. And as I say, one last time, please don't hesitate to get in touch with either us or Hayden if you've got any queries. So thank you all very much and have a great afternoon. Bye now.