DSI® CEO Mark Goode Discusses the Benefits of Cloud Inventory® and its Groundbreaking Mobile-First Cloud-Based Platform

DSI® was founded with a mission to provide companies across all industries with supply chain solutions to make their work more efficient while optimizing inventory. The company’s technology has evolved significantly, and the Cloud Inventory® platform is a prime example of this evolution. In recent years, DSI has focused on mobile-first, cloud-based inventory solutions that revolutionize the way our clients manage their inventory and optimize their processes associated with the supply chain.

Establishing itself at the forefront of industry trends, DSI moved its focus to the cloud to increase ease of use and efficiency for customers while also reducing their costs. Because Cloud Inventory is platform based, customers can move from on-premise to the cloud seamlessly, allowing for easy configuration and improved performance.

Cloud Inventory is the only platform of its kind on the market. Our mobile-first, cloud-based inventory Software as a Service (SaaS) is unique in allowing comprehensive management of inventory both within and beyond an organization’s physical warehouses.

The platform allows companies to track and monitor inventory from the moment it leaves the warehouse, identify its location in the field, and track it on the last mile to the end user. One example of this crucial application would be the tracking of medical supplies from production to delivery and storage in hospitals and medical facilities; an advantage that can make a critical difference in life-or-death situations. Cloud Inventory permits accurate tracking and visibility from beginning to end of the entire supply chain journey.

DSI is committed to fully cloud-enabled inventory management as the future of the industry, because cloud-based platforms optimize productivity and real-time tracking of inventory at all stages of the journey. Traditional inventory management approaches can be time-consuming and divert resources away from other valuable processes. Because cloud-based inventory management provides the same function as on-premise solutions, but more efficiently, businesses that utilize the Cloud Inventory platform optimize time and resources, and avoid complications arising from human error.

We understand that some customers may be reluctant to move to a fully cloud-based platform, but we are certain that once they experience the difference and improvements in access and productivity, they will be completely satisfied with the results. For customers needing to find value during the conversion process, our platform can be quickly and seamlessly integrated with existing systems they may already be using. Cloud-enabled management and monitoring of inventory also provides greater flexibility and real-time updates, a feature that many companies are using to their advantage in managing the challenges presented while doing business in the midst of the current pandemic. 

Cloud Inventory customers span all types of industries. In most cases, our customers are multi-million-dollar companies that are asset-driven. With the Cloud Inventory platform, DSI partners with companies in such industries as life sciences, telecommunications/utility, energy/oil & gas, EPC (engineering, procurement, construction), consumer packaged goods, and mining, among many others. These companies benefit from our cloud-based solution because they carry a high volume of inventory both in the warehouse and in the field, and our product helps them improve their delivery of inventory by allowing accurate tracking from end to end.

The Cloud Inventory platform is important to many organizations because it digitizes outdated paper-based processes, making them more efficient. Our tracking capabilities improve visibility and optimize accurate and efficient control of inventory. By digitizing a company’s supply chain data, our platform provides greater inventory visibility from start to finish, and unrivaled accuracy. It also provides value through its ability to continually update and optimize inventory as a company expands and grows, preventing many of the problems that arise with sudden growth and rapidly increasing market demand. 

The Cloud Inventory platform provides four essential value pillars: 

• Productivity
• Compliance
• Inventory Optimization
• Revenue Generation

Cloud Inventory facilitates compliance while reducing risk; optimizes inventory such as materials, tools, assets, and other goods; improves employee productivity; and increases revenue generation by providing real-time visibility into where inventory lives in the wild. Cloud Inventory was designed to manage inventory in the digital economy, in response to current market trends and the future of supply chain across all industries. 

The digital economy now makes it essential to maintain a data model and a low-code platform that allows any company to modify and upgrade their operations quickly and seamlessly. With outdated systems, it may be a challenge to change or upgrade your supply chain due to the constraints imposed by the inability to quickly change or update legacy systems. Cloud Inventory’s low-code platform and applications allow companies to implement our solutions out of the box or to develop apps that empower evolving business requirements and advanced operations. By having your supply chain inventory data digitized in the Cloud Inventory platform, your management of this data is optimized, with improved accuracy and quick accessibility.

Every industry has compliance standards, be it the medical field with regards to specific medical devices, or the construction industry that requires compliance with specific construction parameters for building supplies and other inventory. By optimizing inventory management with Cloud Inventory, our customers see increased efficiencies at every step of the process. Your employees will waste less time entering data manually or tracking supplies in the warehouse or the field, ensuring that productivity is significantly improved, and improving your company’s bottom line

One of the many examples of how Cloud Inventory has helped companies increase their bottom line is a company called Aegion, which specializes in sewer, gas, and oil pipelines. Once Aegion went to the Cloud Inventory platform, its processing of invoices was shortened from weeks to a single day. Aegion also achieved a time reduction of 200% when processing its daily field tickets. Of course, saving time cuts operational expenses. 

Another excellent example of a company that saw a dramatic improvement in productivity with the Cloud Inventory platform is TTX, which provides railcars and freight car management services. TTX needed improved visibility between their main warehouses, small field warehouses, and teams working in the field that often-encountered problems staying online. The integration of Cloud Inventory’s platform with its Oracle SCM Cloud software provided TTX with increased visibility for an inventory of 165,000 railcars in the field. Productivity was improved by eliminating unnecessary steps in critical business processes, yielding close to 100% accuracy in tracking inventory and shipments, which reduced costs associated with tracking errors.

Cloud Inventory provides companies with accurate information regarding their inventory all the way to the last mile and offers the assurance that the correct product is delivered to the correct destination rapidly and efficiently. The last mile is critical in the supply chain because on average, 30% of a company’s costs are incurred during the last mile of the journey. Cloud Inventory tracks those costs by accurately informing where each product is and its status, confirming that the end user has received it, and verifying that the product was shipped and received in the condition and quantity intended. This could apply to a package arriving at a customer’s doorstep, a medical device being delivered to a hospital or doctor, or construction materials arriving in a timely manner at a job site. 

For companies working in offline or remote areas, Cloud Inventory ensures accuracy in inventory management by queuing up and tracking all offline processes, then updating and synchronizing that data once Wi-Fi or cell phone reception becomes available. 

While many believe that 5G will solve all connectivity problems and that everybody will always be connected, this is not always the case in business. 5G doesn’t take into account a customer who might be in a steel freight container or a rural part of the country without internet connectivity. We are committed to ensuring that someone who might be working disconnected in the field has access to updated information when connectivity is not available.

Cloud Inventory’s ability to provide visibility and accuracy is evidenced by Womble Co., a company based in Houston, Texas, that provides specialty coating systems for steel pipes. Cloud Inventory provided seamless tracking of the company’s inventory of pipes using mobile apps and simple barcode scans. Since implementing the platform, Womble has coated and tracked over 57,000 miles of pipe using the Cloud Inventory platform without losing a single piece. That’s enough length of pipe to wrap around the earth twice! This level of accuracy is ensured thanks to the optimized visibility that the Cloud Inventory solution provides businesses at all steps of their supply chain journey.

For legacy systems, Cloud Inventory also provides capabilities for extensive integration with most mainstream and emerging ERP systems. This means that companies can implement a future-proof solution to improve inventory management, regardless of whether their back-end ERP system is cloud-based or not. The Cloud Inventory platform ensures over 1,200 standard points of integration to a wide range of ERPs and often works with organizations with more than one ERP in place that need accurate inventory tracking and visibility across all their legacy solutions. 

Cloud Inventory seamlessly integrates with ERP platforms such as Oracle’s NetSuite software, and broadens the capabilities of NetSuite with solid, mobile-first solutions to the most difficult challenges in the supply chain. The platform provides broad solutions for the inadequacies inherent in multiple systems and ERPs. Companies rely on Cloud Inventory solutions to fill in gaps and improve the functionality of their ERPs by streamlining critical interactions and increasing productivity and compliance, optimizing the user experience. 

Mark Goode is the President and CEO of DSI and has led the company through a highly successful growth period since being named to the position in 2018.