What Taking The Training Certification Course To Be A Cin7 Core Referral Partner Taught Me

Last May, I took and finished a 3-week course training in Cin7 Academy to make me a Certified Referral Partner.

You may need to have a certain grit to finish the course. Plainly easy going through all the webinars, short videos, helpful tutorials and lengthy reads. I say, it took more than 40 hours or so, excluding the time I need to take some breaks to digest the what I learned.

You would also need some foresight as how one module connects and interacts with others, to look at the big picture on how things can get done by choosing a certain workflow over another.

I consider myself fortunate as I’m not starting to learn this from scratch as I’ve been a user for about a year now in my current role as a supply chain manager. Otherwise, breaks to digest what I learned would have been very much longer.

And I always had that thought in mind a year ago when I was first doing my first few purchase orders, what else can this Cin7 Core do?

Lo, and behold, the heavens answered.

Though I was not prepared to get a very long, detailed answer, mind you.

So, what did I learn?

I will not bore you with all the nitty gritty stuffs inside the system, just the things Cin7 could probably offer if you are looking for robust system to use for your ecommerce business.

First thing is the integration with multitude of other ecommerce apps.

This has been a gem for me. I was able to understand how to properly configure and tie up other applications such as Shopify, Quickbooks, & Amazon. I think this should be basic for anyone doing business in ecommerce - tying up their sales channels and accounting system to their inventory. I’ve seen the hassle most business owners make in using Excel run and have their assistant do the heavy lifting in updating the other apps in sales and accounting. Staying on that kind of set up clearly hinders you in scaling up in your business.

The MRP. Material Requirement Planning.

Man, if you are manufacturing your own goods, this is really a management tool to gain the view from the top of what’s happening on your floor shop. From raw materials, to tracking work hours and schedule, to wastage and output, Cin7 got you covered. You’ll get to see what item goes where and what get into something else as finished products. You can run batches, get insight on lead times and monitor your costs with a touch of a button.

That easy to create automation workflows.

Are you familiar with Zapier? This one’s much easier.

Send the emails when needed when products are below inventory level, check!

Sending purchase orders or sales orders for multiple approval, check!

Run and send reports to team members, check again!

That’s just a few things you’d like to have out of your plate. So why still opt go doing things manually? We know already that doing repetitive tasks drains you of your time and energy, I think business owners must absolutely embrace the future of using automation in their business.

Forecasting Sales and Demand - Powering up with Inventoro

Even before Inventoro & Cin7 merged, I’ve being using the two apps side by side. I couldn’t still convince myself if Inventoro does a superlative job in predicting growth and sales. Although I’ve seen it make good recommendations before that really helped me have a stock situation. My hesitancy perhaps stems from the notion if I set up Inventoro correctly - meaning I fed him with all the right data to give me an accurate ordering requirement. Remember, garbage in, garbage out.

Also I need to emphasize that using Inventoro is not just a one time deal set up. Those things you fed it - lead times, MOQs, expected % growth etc., must need to be reviewed at times, I say quarterly to match the pacing over your business.

I still haven’t fully compared to which is better, Cin7 smart reordering capabilities or Inventoro. Pursuing that would probably be moot and academic, know that Cin7 would eventually have to twitch now their system as they incorporated Inventoro.

This is just a caution if you already are in a more than knee deep issue with your over stock items, Inventoro will not be a big at all. Best thing to do with those overstock is to bundle them with fast moving goods or perhaps run a clearance sale. Inventoro would recommend those same strategies.

Another thing I’ve been doing lately on my role while using Cin7 (and this is not yet taught in the course, and they don’t have this yet still in their program) is integrating payment system which connects purchases, Quickbooks & their banks. DM me to get more info on how this works and perhaps I can help you set this up in your business.

So, is Cin7 for you?

If you only are starting out, maybe have less than 5 products in your store, nah! This is quite expensive and you might not need that much features yet for your business.

But if you are truly scaling up, you definitely would be needing the likes of Cin7 to run your business.

I said “the likes” because each business is unique and each business owner has their own priorities and preference. Best way to be calm and get clarity is to get an expert advise on this subject. Book a call with us now.