A packaging supplies wholesaler ran a legacy ERP their integrator no longer touched. They were not ready for API connectivity — but they were ready to stop making decisions from a monthly static export.
The situation
Operations lead pulled the same five spreadsheets every Monday. Finance wanted faster inventory turns; sales feared stockouts on custom-print lines with long setup times. Nobody trusted a single prioritized list.
What ERP data showed — but didn't say
The ERP could export sales, purchases, and on-hand — that was enough. What failed was the last mile: turning rows into today's reorder, stop-buy, and escalation actions.
Turning history into an action list
Week one: standardized CSV upload. Flowra mapped columns during onboarding and returned:
- Daily ranked reorder lines capped to what receiving could process
- Stop-buy flags on custom lines with collapsing velocity
- Cash-in-inventory summary for the weekly leadership huddle
By week three they added a read-only SQL export for fresher stock positions — still no write-back to the ERP.
Results
- Time from export to purchase decisions: three days to same morning
- Dead inventory value down €94,000 in two quarters
- Operations lead: "We finally act on what the ERP already knew."