Inventory Management with Microsoft Power Apps

SHERPA started handling its inventory like many startups: with an eloborate excel file that tracked items, vendors, inventory levels, safety stock and reorder points. At its number of stock keeping units grow, however, it became increasingly difficult and error prone to manage inventory and handle stocktaking this way, especially from the shop floor. They needed a business application that was flexible and low-cost at the same time.

SHERPA agreed with CERTAINCE on the implementation of a bar code scanner to read items of inventory shelves, reassign stock to projects and save inventory changes. As SHERPA was not ready to implement a full scale ERP at this point, they wanted this app to feed this information right back into relevant tables (initially Excel). They also wanted this app to be flexible and low-cost at the same time. CERTAINCE achieved all this by developing a Inventory Management App on Microsoft’s low-code platform Power Apps.  This app was promptly implemented into SHERPA’s processes with a simple documentation. Over the course of the following weeks, the app has been extended to accomodate more functional requirements.

The cost savings of developing this simple yet extensible low-code app were significant compared to competitive commercial solutions, and it has further reduced the workload/costs for the staff that handles stocktaking. It has also facilitated the assembly process by make information more available.