PSA: Fixed my supply chain mess by just calling the supplier directly instead of using their portal

I spent 3 months fighting with our inventory system because the order portal kept saying items were on backorder. Last Tuesday I got fed up and actually called the guy at the warehouse in Cleveland. Turns out the portal is just a generic system that doesn't update for another 48 hours. He had stock sitting there the whole time and shipped it same day. Has anyone else run into this where the digital tools are actually worse than just picking up the phone?

2 comments

2 Comments

leo_carr1313d ago

Saw a piece on NPR a few weeks back about how companies are spending billions on these fancy digital systems but nobody's actually checking if they work right. The guy they interviewed said most of the problems come from lazy data entry and delays in syncing between departments. Your story fits that perfectly. It's like we've built these huge digital towers just to block ourselves from doing what used to work fine. I had a similar thing with my local hardware supplier where their website said they were out of cedar planks but a quick call got me a whole pallet delivered next day. Makes you wonder how many millions worth of stuff is just sitting in warehouses while the computer says it doesn't exist.

paul_thompson6713d ago

But isn't the human error part the real issue, not the tech itself?