The challenge
A growing DTC brand had outgrown its spreadsheet stack. Inventory planners, fulfillment coordinators, and support leads each maintained their own version of truth. Weekly planning meetings started with reconciliation, not decisions.
Promotional spikes exposed the gaps quickly: support could not see inbound restocks, and fulfillment commitments were made without reliable inventory signals.
What we did
We connected the workflows that drive customer promise—available inventory, fulfillment capacity, and support backlog—into a single operating rhythm with explicit owners at each step.
- Mapped decision rights for replenishment, allocation, and exception handling
- Automated low-risk reorder and routing rules with human override paths
- Linked support ticket trends to inventory and fulfillment signals
- Delivered a leadership dashboard refreshed on a cadence the team could trust
Results
Stockout escalations dropped materially during the next two promotional cycles. Weekly planning moved from a half-day reconciliation exercise to a focused ninety-minute review.
Support, fulfillment, and merchandising now reference the same numbers when discussing customer impact—reducing cross-functional friction during peak periods.
What changed culturally
The biggest shift was clarity of ownership. When a metric moved, teams knew which workflow to inspect instead of debating whose spreadsheet was correct.