From static PDFs to dynamic demand forecasting

The challenge

A wholesale nursery was running its business off static PDF reports, analyzing snapshots that were out of date and 15 pages long. With no live view of demand or on-hand inventory, the team kept getting surprised by stock-outs: customers would order, and the product wouldn't be there. Every stock-out was a sale walked out the door, and there was no early warning to prevent it.

The business needed a way to predict future demand and manage inventory proactively, rather than react to shortages after they occurred. The data was there, but it was buried in unreadable formats with no analysis capabilities.

The approach

We ran the engagement through our WAVES methodology to move from backward-looking reports to a forward-looking system.

Wrangle. We pulled together 3 years of historical sales and inventory data and transformed it into a reliable foundation. We took hundreds of PDF files, programmatically extracting and standardizing the data, so that it could be used for analysis.

Analyze. We built demand forecasts for the top-moving products among thousands of SKUs, projecting expected sales forward so the business could anticipate what it would need rather than react after the fact. In a highly seasonal business, this was crucial for accurate planning. We then paired that with on-hand inventory data to create a powerful combination for smarter inventory management.

Visualize. We replaced the static PDFs with a live weekly dashboard, pairing forecasted demand against current on-hand inventory to automatically flag products at risk of stocking out, before the orders came in.

Enrichment. Once the data foundation was solid and the system was operational, we integrated a custom AI agent to enhance the forecasting capabilities and provide more nuanced insights about the data.

Strategize. With at-risk products surfaced in advance, the team could reorder proactively and protect revenue that was previously slipping away unnoticed. Every week, the business gets a summary of the key metrics and insights delivered to their inbox.

The results

• Noticeable reduction in stock-outs since launch on the products the system monitors.
• A live weekly dashboard replaced static PDFs, giving the team a real-time view of demand and inventory. Equipped with a custom AI agent they can ask questions to about the data.
• Proactive reordering driven by forecasts and stock-out-risk flags, instead of reacting to shortages after a sale was already lost.

Why it matters

Most inventory problems aren't really inventory problems, they're visibility problems. The data to see a stock-out coming usually already exists; it's just trapped in static reports nobody can act on in time. Turning that history into a live, forecast-driven dashboard is exactly the kind of custom workflow app that pays for itself in protected sales.