Inventory & Supply Chain AutomationPurpose
1.2. Automator processes collect supplier prices at predefined intervals, compare against historical and competitor benchmarks, and generate automated reports for management.
1.3. The automation purpose is to improve inventory procurement efficiency, ensure purchase from the most cost-effective supplier, and reduce manual data entry errors through advanced automating.
Trigger Conditions
2.2. Manual or automatedly triggered upon inventory reorder point.
2.3. Automating may occur when supplier databases, web portals, or APIs update prices.
Platform variants
• Feature/Setting: Sheets API for scheduled fetching and comparison logic via scripts; use time-driven triggers for automation.
3.2. Microsoft Excel Online
• Feature/Setting: Power Automate connector for Excel to schedule data pulls and automated reconciliation workflows.
3.3. Zapier
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled Zap automator to fetch supplier prices from apps and email parsed data; automates summary creation.
3.4. Make (formerly Integromat)
• Feature/Setting: Repeating scenario automates multi-source inventory data collection and automated report delivery.
3.5. Airtable
• Feature/Setting: Automations and scheduled scripting automate price retrieval using Airtable API and trigger comparison workflows.
3.6. Smartsheet
• Feature/Setting: Automated workflows and sheet links for pulling supplier prices and automated reporting schedules.
3.7. Power BI
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled refresh and dataflows automate price data ingestion and visual report generation.
3.8. Tableau
• Feature/Setting: Tableau Prep Conductor for scheduled data flows, automating price data comparisons and report publishing.
3.9. Twilio SMS
• Feature/Setting: Programmable SMS API for automatedly sending scheduled price summary alerts to manager mobile numbers.
3.10. Slack
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled Slackbot messages automated from third-party workflow tools or custom apps delivering price report summaries.
3.11. SendGrid
• Feature/Setting: Automated emails via API for distributing scheduled inventory price reports.
3.12. Email (SMTP/IMAP)
• Feature/Setting: Configured for automated distribution of detailed price comparison PDFs to stakeholder lists.
3.13. AWS Lambda
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled Lambda functions automate price scraping, API fetching, and report assembly.
3.14. Google Cloud Functions
• Feature/Setting: Time-based triggers automate fetching ingredient prices and emailing results.
3.15. Python (scripted)
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled (e.g., cron) scripts with BeautifulSoup/requests automate web scraping and data processing.
3.16. Microsoft Power Automate
• Feature/Setting: Recurring triggers for SharePoint/List source monitoring and automating supplier price report flows.
3.17. Trello
• Feature/Setting: Power-ups or Butler automation for posting scheduled price summary cards to inventory boards.
3.18. Monday.com
• Feature/Setting: Automations recipe for scheduled fetching and automating updates in ingredient price columns.
3.19. Notion
• Feature/Setting: API workflows automate periodic import of price data and update of reporting pages.
3.20. QuickBooks Online
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled API fetches for supplier bill imports and automation scripts for comparing historical purchase prices.
Benefits
4.2. Provides real-time, automated visibility into market price trends.
4.3. Enables rapid, automated supplier cost benchmarking and decision-making.
4.4. Ensures cost savings by automating competitive supplier selection.
4.5. Enhances procurement with repeatable, schedulable automation workflows for restaurants.