System Overview

System Purpose Cin7 claims to be the “world’s most integrated inventory", Point of Sale (POS), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and Page Description Language (PDL) system” (Cin7 2017). Mostly utilized in Business to Business (B2B) inventory and sales management,  Cin7 connects apps for your business into one system. For example, you might sell your product through Amazon, Shopify, your website, and salesforce. Cin7 aggregates all of these applications to help manage your supply chain and track sales on the backend. For our B2B startup, WANT NOT: Farm to Health, we realize having a strong backend digital tool will make communicating with all of our customers, farmers, and health institutions easier and we will be able to quickly provide the answers they desire.  A McKinsey & Company study published in August 2017 highlights that 76% of customers wish to talk with someone when dealing with a new service, so having a digital system that can support providing answers to all supply questions is essential (Angevine, Plotkin, & Stanley, 2017).

Cin7 Interface. Image source.

Cin7 Clients. Image source.

Functions and Features Cin7 launched in the U.S. in 2016. This New Zealand based company offers built-in capabilities for supply chain and point of sale logistics for e-commerce. Especially helpful in inventory management, Cin7 is well-known for B2B wholesale management. Due to the diverse functionality of Cin7, WANT NOT: Farm to Health proposes to use Cin7 as a Enterprise Resource Planning (ERI) software. This allows our business to streamline processes and information using a shared database supporting multiple functions by different units of the business. Cin7 U.S. is based in Seattle and is implemented by brands such as Wolff Coffee Roasters, GT Academy, The Design Store, and The Spice and Tea Exchange.

Feature	Advantage
Accurate Inventory Management	Provides information regarding to the cost of goods sold and the stock movement. Software that allows a company to keep up with demand, without overstocking.
Point of Sale Software	Not only acts as a cash register, but also keeps sales team up to date with inventory levels.
Connects your Warehouse to your Sales Channels	Through connecting warehouse and sales channels it provides a quick, simple, and accurate way to fill orders so customers stay loyal.
Reports	Cin7 enables companies to create all their reports in one place, whether it is tracking sales, forecasting, or reporting on pre-sales.

Use for Our Firm, WANT NOT: Farm to Health Our firm, WANT NOT: Farm to Health, will be a B2B distributor in Western Pennsylvania, connecting farm
produce with institutional food service providers in the healthcare network. We sell affordable surplus food to institutions such as hospitals that are looking for healthy foods. By capitalizing on farmer surplus and healthcare institutions that can process less-than-perfect vegetables, we offer a solution that invests in farmers and meets nutritional benchmarks for hospital food service.  Much like the development of technological matchmakers, as discussed by economist David Evans (2016), we are connecting supply with a customer looking to provide healthy, nutritious foods to their customers while saving money.

We plan on paying farmers for the produce that would typically either be donated or allowed to die in the fields, and provide this produce to institutions at reduced costs as compared to the Grade A produce currently sold to institutions. This will help distribute risk along the value chain. By utilizing Cin7 as an ERP system, we will be about to track inventory and sales effectiveness, connect our warehouse to sales channels, and generates reports from various business repots to ensure maximum profits for local farmers. While we are levering a pre-existing technology for our business, we aim to disrupt the current system of food distribution and food surplus. Farmers have one of three options at this time: selling perfect produce to suppliers, donating leftover produce to food banks and pantries, or turning under surplus produce into the fields and losing potential profits.  This fourth option will provide farmers with another opportunity to earn income while shifting perceptions about the quality of produce that is sellable (Gallaugher, 2016).

References

Angevine, C., Plotkin, C. L., & Stanley, J. (2017, August). When B2B buyers want to go digital and when they don’t. Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/when-b2b-buyers-want-to-go-digital-and-when-they-dont

Evans, D. S. (2016, July). Matchmakers: The new economics of multi-sided platforms. Webinar, Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/webinar/2016/06/matchmakers-the-new-economics-of multisided-platforms

Gallaugher, J. (2016, July). Information systems: A manager’s guide to harnessing technology (5th ed.). Flatworld Publishing.