Prerequisites and data integration

To ensure the insights suite accurately reflects the health of your fulfillment network, specific system configurations and data baselines must be established prior to utilizing the inventory integrity dashboard and reporting tools.

System and module requirements

  • The Inventory Visibility service must be adopted to track supply availability.
  • Routine supply adjustment and synchronizations must be actively maintained that can be achieved via the Sterling Order Management System (OMS) integration or an integrated external Order Management System.

Catalog and financial data configuration

To calculate accurate financial exposure and operational metrics, the foundational data must be properly defined within Sterling Intelligent Promising as follows:

  • All SKUs maintained in the system must be defined within the catalog module.
  • To calculate the stranded inventory value, every catalog item must include an accurate unit cost value. The system uses this unit cost multiplied by the on hand quantity of stagnant stock to determine the total financial liability.
  • All fulfillment nodes must be explicitly defined within the system.

Initial supply snapshot

The Insight data lake relies on a continuous feed of inventory trace data, retaining this information for up to 365 days before it is automatically purged. The initial data ingestion process depends on your tenant status:
  • New customers
    Supply data is automatically written to the data lake from the moment the tenant is onboarded. No additional administrative action is required.
  • Existing customers
    Since supply data may not exist in the data lake during the feature activation, it is recommend to perform a full inventory supply sync to ensure all data are recorded in the data lake.

Operational best practices

To maximize the value of the inventory integrity feature, fulfillment managers should establish a regular cadence for cycle counting and supply synchronization. Regular synchronization ensures that items intended for sale are marked as active inventory. Once the baseline is established, managers can utilize the reports to systematically identify phantom SKUs, dormant items, and dead stock for permanent removal.