Operations watchdog for wholesalers and B2B distributors
A supplier shortage caught at picking, a forgotten backorder, an order stuck awaiting validation: every blind spot in the flow costs clients rescued by the competitor. The watchdog monitors the ERP continuously and alerts before the breaking point.
In your day-to-day
- 01
Anticipated shortage alerts: consumption crossed with real supplier lead times, before stock hits zero.
- 02
Backorder tracking: every pending line is traced, chased with the supplier and reported to the client.
- 03
Detection of blocked orders — balance exceeded, validation pending — before they miss the day’s dispatch.
A typical scenario
A food wholesaler carries 4,500 references, 800 of them short-dated fresh goods; picking runs at night, when nobody is watching the screens.
- 01
2:10 AM: a fast-moving reference drops below its reorder point with the next inbound delivery six days out — the buyer finds the quantified alert at shift start.
- 02
3 AM: sixty cases of a batch two days from expiry are still sitting in stock; flagged for the morning promotion or donation, before the skip.
- 03
6:30 AM: the gap between book stock and picked stock widens abnormally on one aisle — the day’s cycle count is pointed there, not at random.
What changes
Night stops being a blind spot. Morning decisions rest on gaps already qualified; waste and stockouts get handled before they are suffered.
Order of magnitude
Working assumptions
- →around 15 batches a week at expiry risk across the 800 fresh references
- →an average batch value of €300
€4,500 of goods at stake every week; moving even half of them in time saves in the order of €2,000 a week — with the alert landing the same night, not at next-day discovery.
Indicative estimate built on average sector assumptions — it gets recalibrated on your actual volumes during scoping.
What eats your days
- →
Orders arrive by email, WhatsApp and phone — and get retyped by hand into the ERP, with the errors that come with it.
- →
Client balances slip because collection comes after order processing, and the rep discovers the blocked account in front of the client.
- →
Supplier shortages and backorders surface at picking time — too late to offer an alternative.
How it works
- 1
Continuous watch over your flows
Stock, orders, deliveries, payments, queues, systems: the watchdog reads your tools continuously and learns each flow’s normal behaviour.
- 2
Signal, not noise
A seasonal variation is not an anomaly. The watchdog qualifies each gap — normal, watch, incident — and only alerts when action is useful. That triage is what keeps alerts trusted.
- 3
The right person, with context
The alert reaches the person who can act, with the diagnosis: what, since when, how big, and first leads. Escalation is automatic if nobody acknowledges.
Typical results
4 min
from anomaly to alert, observed in production
24/7
watching, nights and weekends included
÷10
alert volume, thanks to signal/noise triage
Orders of magnitude observed in production; your diagnostic sets your own baseline and targets.
Frequently asked questions
Can the watchdog anticipate a shortage rather than observe it?+
Yes: it crosses available stock, outflow pace and observed — not theoretical — supplier lead times, to alert when reordering is due, not when stock is at zero.
Can it warn the client affected by a backorder?+
If you authorise it: it notifies the client with the new expected date as soon as the supplier confirms — an informed client waits, a surprised client orders elsewhere.
Is this the problem eating your team’s time?
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