Oh Inventory, Inventory, wherefore art thou Inventory?

Part 1: Overview of Inventory Visibility in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain

So, your business has been good, and you’ve acquired some new production facilities.  Or maybe your use of third-party warehousing has increased.  The bottom line is that you have a lot of inventory in a lot of different places, and those places are not all in D365.  You need something that can gather all your current inventory data in one place, so that you can easily see what you have, what you need, and when you can get it.  Enter the Inventory Visibility Add-In.

Gather ‘round, ye inventory data

The Inventory Visibility Add-In is a microservice-based tool that can connect to a variety of data sources, from warehouse management to point-of-sale systems.  You can use it to query your inventory and know with one result what you have available and where you might be short.  What about those times when you have a customer, and you want to know if you can meet all their wants and desires?  Inventory Visibility has available-to-promise functionality as well.  It also can make soft reservations, so you can avoid the dreaded case of the oversold inventory.

Connectable and adjustable

You might be wondering how all those different inventory sources are going to send data back and forth to the Inventory Visibility Add-In.  The answer lies in the magic of RESTful APIs that are included with the product.  But, you say, I have pallets over here and cases over there and pounds of things in between.  Not to worry, as Inventory Visibility can handle multiple statuses and dimensions.  It also scales based on your transactional volume, so it can handle situations like seasonal spurts in production or demand.

So, what else can it do?

What you’ve read so far has piqued your interest.  But just like in your favorite infomercial, there’s more.  Inventory Visibility gives you a central point for inventory adjustment, so you don’t have delays in knowing your on-hand situation.  It can also pre-allocate your stock so you can make sure your most special customer gets what they need.  Inventory Visibility also provides support for Warehouse Management set-ups, so if you are using that in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain, Inventory Visibility has you covered.

Now that is a price I can handle

The good news about Inventory Visibility is that it is included at no extra cost when you have Dynamics 365 supply chain.  There is one small caveat, however.  Inventory Visibility is built using Microsoft Power Platform, so there are storage capacity and API limits to consider.  If you are already using other Power Platform technologies, you might already have the bandwidth you need.  If not, an upgraded Power Platform license may be needed.

OK, so now what?

Part two of this blog series will go over the bits and bobs of installing the Inventory Visibility Add-in and getting it set up for first time use.  Future blogs in this series will cover different use-cases for the add-in so you can get an idea of how it might help you get all that inventory under control, because while Sue Storm is great at being invisible, having invisible inventory is not a super power anyone wants.