Ryan: Welcome back to the Deep Dive. You know, if you’re in manufacturing or distribution, there’s this, this paradox that just drives planners crazy. You spend ages. Yeah, weeks, maybe months building this really solid looking demand forecast. The prediction seems great.
Emma: Yeah. The numbers look good on paper.
Ryan: Exactly. But then you look at what’s actually happening with inventory.
Emma: Yeah.
Ryan: You know, the overstock here, the late vendor orders there, the constant firefighting, it.
Emma: Just doesn’t match the plan.
Ryan: Doesn’t match that beautiful plan at all. And people are using pretty advanced systems like Business Central, but they still feel like they’re, well, frankly, working blindfolded sometimes.
Emma: It’s a total breakdown of trust, isn’t it, in the system itself. I mean, the source material we looked at really highlights this. Business Central is a solid ERP foundation, no doubt.
Ryan: Sure, sure.
Emma: But it’s native planning tools, especially the standard MRP materials requirements planning.
Ryan: Yeah.
Emma: Well, they can create a huge amount of work. You run the plan and then you spend what, like 80% of your day just cleaning up the mess, validating recommendations you kind of know are probably wrong.
Ryan: Yeah, that gut feeling. So, okay, that’s our mission for this deep dive. We’re really digging into InsightWorks enhanced planning worksheet, the EPW.
Emma: Right.
Ryan: The goal is to figure out exactly how this app tackles that fundamental problem, how it closes that gap, that loop between the forecast demand and what you can actually manage on the supply side. We want to see how it gives manufacturers, distributors, the kind of visibility and control that maybe the standard BC tools just don’t quite offer out of the box.
Emma: And we really have to start by framing that core problem. Like you said, if you’re a planner using Beefy, you. You know that feeling, you hit run MRP and boom. You’re staring at a screen full of suggested actions that just feel half baked. And the reason really is that disconnect. The disconnect between the forecast and the actual flow of goods.
Ryan: Okay, let’s unpack that. That disconnect. Where are these critical bits of information getting separated in a typical Business Central setup?
Emma: Well, it really comes down to data silos. That’s the heart of it. The system tries to glue things together after the fact, but you’ve got these key data sets that just don’t talk to each other dynamically enough.
Ryan: Like what?
Emma: Okay, so you’ve got forecast living over here, maybe in a dedicated module, maybe even Just, you know, an Excel sheet, somebody manages.
Ryan: Right.
Emma: Then your actual demand, sales orders, service orders, that’s in the general ledger, kind of its own world. And then crucially, things like vendor constraints, minimum order values, lead times, the practical stuff. Exactly. And that stuff is often buried in, you know, various item cards or vendor cards. Separate places again.
Ryan: So the standard planning engine just kind of mashes these separate pieces together and the result is, well, you called it digital chaos.
Emma: Yeah.
Ryan: The sources kept calling it noise.
Emma: Yeah, noise is a good word for it.
Ryan: How does that noise actually show up for a planner, especially if you’re in, say, fast moving distribution?
Emma: It shows up as just this, this flood of irrelevant information. Basically, because the standard mrp, it’s obsessed with dates, like really precise dates. And because those data pieces are separate, it leads to this constant stream of cancel this and reschedule that messages. Think about a classic distribution scenario, right? You ordered, say 500 units from a vendor. It’s on the water, it’s inbound. But the delivery date slips by, I don’t know, 48 hours, two days.
Ryan: Okay, happens all the time.
Emma: All the time. But standard MRP doesn’t see that as, oh, it’s still coming, we’re good. It sees a date mismatch against its plan and bang, two alerts. Cancel the old PO line and reschedule that PO line for two days later.
Ryan: Wow. Okay, so that’s the core of it. It treats a minor two day slip with the same red alert urgency as like a critical stockout threatening a production line.
Emma: You got it. Your planning worksheet suddenly lights up like a Christmas tree, just flashing alerts everywhere. And probably 90% of them are just distractions. Meaningless noise.
Ryan: Makes sense.
Emma: And the poor human planner is stuck playing traffic cop full time. Right. Trying to reconcile these results. The system should have filtered out in the first place. And the outcome is always the same? Pretty much. Frustrated planners definitely. Overstocked bins on items that look like they needed action but didn’t. And ironically, late vendor orders on the stuff that did matter because those signals got buried under all the noise.
Ryan: Right, Right. Okay, so the big idea with the epw, architecturally speaking, is to get rid of those silos instead of mashing data together at the end, how does it change the workflow? How’s it organized?
Emma: It basically redesigns the planner’s main screen into this single dynamic workspace. That’s the key one.
Ryan: Workspace?
Emma: Yeah, everything you need, your forecast inputs, current inventory levels, projected replenishment needs, even those vendor specific constraints. It’s all visible and crucially, actionable. Right there. The screen becomes this live, single source of truth for making replenishment decisions. It’s designed not just to crunch numbers, but to actually reflect what’s happening in the business right now.
Ryan: Okay, that sounds like a big shift. Yeah, moving from just cleaning up bad data to actually, you know, planning. So let’s dive into the specifics. Section one, the modern planners dashboard. The sources talked about an arsenal of practical upgrades hiding under an interface that looks familiar to VC users. What’s in that arsenal?
Emma: Yeah, it looks familiar, which helps with adoption. But underneath, it’s really about giving planners control and context instantly. Things they probably wish they had out of the box.
Ryan: Like what? Give me an example.
Emma: Okay, first, big one. Visual supply and demand summaries. When you click on an item line in the worksheet, you don’t have to open like four different windows to figure out what’s going on.
Ryan: Right. The drill down nightmare.
Emma: Exactly. Instead, you instantly see the key drivers right there. How many are on sales orders, how many needed for service, how many are already on pos, what’s moving via transfers. And it just eliminates that whole swivel chair planning thing immediately.
Ryan: Okay, visibility is good. But here’s where it gets really tricky, especially for distributors. Vendor logistics. You can’t just blindly order what the system suggests for an item. If doing that means you miss, say, a prepaid freight minimum from your supplier, oh, absolutely. And suddenly you’re on the hook for thousands in shipping costs you didn’t expect, you nailed it.
Emma: And that’s where the vendor Planning insights feature comes in. This is actually a huge strategic shift, not just a small feature.
Ryan: How so?
Emma: The worksheet actively tracks those vendor specific thresholds. So it lets the planner optimize the entire order for that vendor right then and there. Are you like $50 short of hitting the spend needed for free freight? Yeah, the system flags it right on the screen. So you can maybe add a few more units of something else, push that order over the threshold, and save potentially thousands on shipping. It turns purchasing from just executing lines into a real cost optimization exercise.
Ryan: Wow. Okay, that’s. That’s not just a convenience feature. That’s potentially millions in freight savings annually for some companies. That’s a critical insight. Now, a practical question. If the EPW is handling all this extra data and logic, does it mean a huge retraining effort or tons of custom setup compared to native bc? People listening will worry about that.
Emma: That’s a really fair question. And the sources we looked at emphasize that it’s Designed for ease of adoption. The power is integrated into that familiar worksheet framework.
Ryan: So it feels like bce, but does.
Emma: More pretty much take. Managing stock across multiple warehouses or locations, for example, that can get complicated fast. Oh yeah, the EPW has this multi location awareness built in, so you can instantly see stock levels across different sites for an item. And, and here’s the kicker. You can switch the replenishment method, maybe buy it, maybe transfer it from another site, maybe trigger a production order with literally a single click, all from that one planning line. No jumping around.
Ryan: Okay, that smooths things out. What about the biggest time waster for many planners? I mean, having to leave the worksheet, navigate to the item card, maybe drill into the Ski U card? Yeah, just to tweak a reorder point or a minimum order quantity because you realize the system’s logic or was slightly off for that one item.
Emma: That specific headache gone. That’s handled by the quick parameter adjustments. You can update those essential planning parameters. Reorder point, min, order quantity, safety, stock, whatever, directly in the planning worksheet grid itself.
Ryan: Right there on the line.
Emma: Right there. You stop being a BC admin, constantly clicking through menus and you start being a planner, actually fine tuning the logic as you see the results. It’s a massive time saver.
Ryan: Makes sense. And one more for this dashboard section. Yeah, the sanity check. Before I hit carry out action message on a big order, I need some confidence that the recommendation actually makes sense.
Emma: Absolutely. You need that context, and that’s covered by the historical context feature using these little inline charts.
Ryan: Charts right in the worksheet.
Emma: Yep. So before you commit to buying say 10,000 units of something, you can quickly glance at its sales history. Right there. Has demand suddenly tanked in the last six months? This ensures every decision is informed by that historical context. Preventing what might look like a data valid order, but is actually fundamentally a bad business decision.
Ryan: Okay, that covers the interface, the controls, the user experience side. But let’s talk about the engine under the hood. If the dashboard is the front end, how does the EPW actually calculate the plan differently? Especially when dealing with that high volume distribution chaos we mentioned. This is section two, A smarter MRP for the real world.
Emma: Right. We have to circle back to that concept of noise. And a lot of that noise comes from standard MRPs reliance on really strict date phasing.
Ryan: Date phasing. Explain that a bit more.
Emma: Okay, so date phasing means the system calculates supply and demand based on very specific projected calendar dates for manufacturing. This makes sense. Right. You need component A to arrive precisely on Tuesday for the assembly line that runs on Wednesday.
Ryan: Okay. Critical for manufacturing, but in distribution.
Emma: In distribution, that obsession with exact dates often breaks down. You’ve got thousands of SKUs coming and going, maybe bundled in containers. Delivery dates shift slightly. It’s more fluid.
Ryan: Right.
Emma: So when standard MRP sees a required date shift by a day or two for something already inbound like we discussed, it kind of panics. It generates those cancel reschedule messages. The system is basically running the super complex date sensitive calculations suitable for manufacturing on simple inbound inventory. And that creates just massive clutter.
Ryan: So the planner ends up having to mentally filter out what, 90% of the lines on the screen just to find the 10% that actually need attention.
Emma: Precisely. You spend all your time wading through irrelevant alerts. So the EPW introduces a different mode specifically designed for this distribution environment. It’s called Calculate Purchase Plan.
Ryan: Okay, Calculate Purchase Plan. What’s different about it?
Emma: What’s really interesting here is that it essentially eliminates that unnecessary date phasing noise for purchasing. It focuses purely on aggregate net requirements over a defined period.
Ryan: Aggregate net requirements?
Emma: Meaning it asks a simpler question, looking ahead, do I have enough total supply coming in eventually, regardless of a two day slip, to meet my total expected demand and maintain my safety stock? If the answer is yes, even if some dates shifted slightly, it doesn’t bother you with an alert. But if the net position total supply minus total demand drops below your safety stock threshold, then it flags it. That’s the signal you need to act on.
Ryan: That’s a huge difference. So it moves from micromanaging calendar days for every single inbound PO to macro managing overall inventory levels against safety soc.
Emma: Exactly. It focuses on what actually matters for keeping items in stock in a distribution context.
Ryan: So what are the results? What do users actually see change when they use this mode?
Emma: The results are pretty immediate and tangible. First. Second, significantly cleaner plans. Way more actionable. Planners aren’t drowning in noise. Second, users report dramatically faster processing times. Yeah, we saw reports in the source material of companies handling like 100,000 SKUs in just minutes. That’s basically impossible with standard MRP because generating all that date phasing noise takes time and resources. You eliminate that endless cycle of cancel this, reschedule that clutter. And maybe the best part, you can automate it. You can schedule this focused calculate purchase plan to run every morning before planners even get in.
Ryan: So they walk in, they walk in.
Emma: And they have a fresh set of trustworthy, relevant recommendations waiting for them. It Completely shifts their role from reactive cleanup artist to proactive plan reviewer and strategic thinker.
Ryan: That really does sound like moving the planner up the value chain from just tactical button pushing to more strategic oversight. Okay, okay, let’s take it one step further. The highest level of integration, Section three, tying forecast to execution. This apparently happens when you pair the EPW with its sibling, the Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet.
Emma: Yes, this is where it gets really tightly integrated. When you use the full Enhanced Planning pack, which includes both tools, the forecast stops being just a static number on a report somewhere.
Ryan: Okay.
Emma: It becomes an active driver of your planning parameters.
Ryan: Wait, so you mean the forecast doesn’t just tell you what you might need? Yeah, it actually tells the system how to plan for ordering it.
Emma: Absolutely. Those forecasted quantities, which themselves might be coming from sophisticated tools like Azure machine learning, pulling in external data, they automatically adjust key planning settings right on the item or SKU card.
Ryan: Automatically adjust them like what?
Emma: Yeah. So let’s say the forecast driven by ML, predicts a huge spike in demand for item X next quarter. The system doesn’t wait for a planner to notice and then manually go update hundreds of SKU cards.
Ryan: Right.
Emma: It automatically increases things like the the reorder point, maybe the default reorder quantity, the safety stock levels for that item based on that forward looking forecast.
Ryan: Wow. That dynamic adaptation, that’s powerful because it removes that huge lag time, the gap between knowing something might happen and actually adjusting your planning system to prepare for it.
Emma: Exactly. You eliminate the human delay and potential for error in translating forecast insights into planning parameters. The forecast becomes the engine driving the planning logic in near real time.
Ryan: So this integration ensures that every po, every transfer order, every production order that.
Emma: The EPW suggests, it’s directly traceable back to an informed, data backed forecast. It creates that seamless handshake forecast to flow without the disconnect. That’s the goal.
Ryan: Okay, let’s bring it home. Let’s talk payoff for the listener, the planner who’s juggling hundreds, maybe thousands of SKUs multiple locations. What’s the real world ROI here? What’s the impact on their confidence?
Emma: Well, the number one payoff is just a massive improvement in decision quality and overall efficiency. You drastically cut down on that constant firefighting, you. Less time spent reacting to bad suggestions from flawed MRP runs.
Ryan: Saves time, saves stress.
Emma: Definitely. And because you have that built in historical context, those vendor insights we talked about right there, the decisions you do make are just smarter, more informed. You’re not just saving time, you’re actively preventing Costly mistakes.
Ryan: Can we put any kind of number on that? What’s a financial impact look like?
Emma: It’s actually pretty compelling based on what users report. We saw multiple sources saying the tool often pays for itself on day one one by preventing a single bad order run.
Ryan: Day one? Seriously?
Emma: Yeah. Think about the cost of just one major screw up. Ordering way too much of something that then becomes obsolete. Or having to pay for emergency expedited freight because you missed ordering something critical that can cost what, five times the normal shipping rate easily. So when you prevent even one of those big mistakes, the ROI can be incredibly fast and substantial.
Ryan: Okay, zooming out then the bigger picture. We know supply chain volatility isn’t going away. It’s kind of the new normal heading into 2025 and beyond. Yeah. Why is this kind of connective tissue, as you called it, so essential for business central users right now?
Emma: Because business central, as good as it is, provides that solid transactional backbone. It records what happened. But in today’s world, you need more than a backbone. You need a responsive nervous system.
Ryan: Good analogy.
Emma: The enhanced planning worksheet, especially with the forecasting piece of, provides that crucial connective tissue. It keeps the signals from demand, the reality of supply and the execution of planning all linked together synchronously. It allows the business to actually sense and respond to volatility much faster. It transforms planning from this high stress, error prone chore into a much more confident, efficient and ultimately strategic process.
Ryan: So we’ve really seen how the EPW aims to take planning out of that guesswork zone, that blindfolded feeling we started with, and turn it into a more predictable, confident flow, really bridging that gap that exists even when your forecasts themselves are pretty decent.
Emma: Exactly. Forecast is one thing, executing against it reliably is another. This tries to connect the two.
Ryan: Okay, so to wrap up, let’s leave our listeners with something to think about.
Emma: All right, so here’s a thought to mull over. Building on all this. If the system combining tools like EPW and ML forecasting can now continuously adapt critical inventory parameters, things like safety stock reorder points based on real time data and predictions.
Ryan: Yeah.
Emma: What’s the next logical step? How close are we to potentially removing the human element almost entirely from the purely tactical calculation part of inventory planning? And if we do that, what truly high level strategic tasks does that free up the human planner to focus exclusively on things like complex negotiations, long term render relationship strategy, proactive risk assessment across the supply chain? Maybe that’s where the human planner’s unique value really lies in the future, it.
