GRPI – Transforming raw material planning with Netstock’s Opportunity Engine feature

The Challenge

Before Netstock, GRPI’s purchasing team relied heavily on spreadsheets to manage inventory decisions. While familiar, this manual approach made it difficult to identify purchasing opportunities or maintain consistent visibility across thousands of SKUs.

“Moving from spreadsheets to Netstock required a complete shift in how we think about planning,” said Tony Mapes, GRPI’s lead on the Netstock implementation. “Once we aligned our processes and cleaned up our ERP data, everything started to click, that’s when we really began to see the value.”

Transitioning to Netstock marked a turning point for GRPI, shifting the team from reactive, spreadsheet-based planning to proactive, data-driven decision-making powered by accurate, reliable information.

Smarter Insights with the Netstock Opportunity Engine

GRPI’s purchasing team has fully embraced Netstock’s Opportunity Engine — a powerful decision-support feature that surfaces daily replenishment and purchasing opportunities, helping the team stay ahead of demand.

“The system highlights opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed,” said Tony, GRPI’s Netstock lead. “It helps our team focus their attention where it matters most, ensuring we have the right stock, in the right place, at the right time.”

When the Opportunity Engine flags potential replenishment needs, it also prompts GRPI to review other stock items from the same supplier. This allows the team to coordinate bulk purchases, driving greater purchasing efficiency and stronger supplier collaboration across the business.

Driving Smarter Inventory Decisions

With Netstock GRPI uncovered hidden inefficiencies in their inventory that weren’t visible through spreadsheets.

“Netstock has significantly improved our inventory management,” Tony explained. “It gave us full visibility into our inventory value and we discovered we were about $1.5 million in excess inventory.”

With clear visibility into slow-moving and excess stock, GRPI can now make more strategic purchasing decisions, optimize safety stock levels, and prevent costly stockouts that impact production.

Clean Data, Clear Insights

A key lesson from GRPI’s journey has been the critical importance of clean, structured data.

Working with Netstock and Fishbowl, GRPI focused on cleaning and standardizing data to enhance forecasting precision.

“A thorough understanding of the process and proper data management can prevent unnecessary complications. Clean data is absolutely critical to ensure the system delivers accurate insights.” said Tony

Results and Next Steps

• Improved visibility into $1.5M in excess inventory
• Greater control over raw material planning and safety stock
• Reduced stockouts and smoother production continuity
• Plans to expand Netstock use to manufacturing sites in the U.S.

Looking ahead, Tony plans to extend the use of Netstock’s Opportunity Engine to identify inactive parts and optimize purchasing further.

“The insights from the Opportunity Engine will be really useful in cleaning up parts we no longer need,” he noted.

Conclusion

By embracing Netstock’s AI-driven Opportunity Engine and focusing on data integrity, GRPI has transformed its raw material management and purchasing strategy. What began as a challenge of adapting from spreadsheets has evolved into a journey toward proactive, data-driven inventory optimization.