Epicor plus Ward: stockout for a CFO
Ward reads straight from sales orders, inventory, purchase orders from Epicor, runs stockout on it, and sends the finance read every morning.
How a CFO runs stockout off Epicor
Stockout Prediction is a finding type Ward runs continuously. Ward detects SKUs trending toward zero-on-hand and alerts your team with replenishment recommendations before customers notice.
Your P&L surprises are born on the store floor. Ward writes the finding at the altitude a CFO works at.
How it runs. Ward analyzes sell-through velocity, current inventory levels, lead times, and supplier reliability to predict stockouts 24-72 hours before they occur.
The connection itself. Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse.
What it does
- Supplier-aware lead time modeling
- Priority ranking by revenue impact
- Reduce lost sales by catching gaps early
- Automated replenishment recommendations
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled Store 37’s last 28 days against the chain baseline. Two root causes, both compounding.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
labor_efficiency | Rev/labor-hour −22% vs. cluster, staffing mismatch at 11a–1p peak |
inventory.fresh | Fresh fill 83%, backroom replenishment lag at 2–4p |
promo.lift | BOGO crackers cannibalized Brand Y by 28%, net category +6% |
Recommend: re-baseline Store 37 schedule against true peak, raise replen window to 1p, and review the BOGO before next cycle.
labor_scheduling…
Reporting
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries. Every number re-derivable from its SQL.
| Model | Horizon | MAPE |
|---|---|---|
holt_winters | 4wk | 4.1% |
arima_sarimax | 13wk | 8.9% |
gbm_demand | 1wk | 2.1% |
bayes_hier | new store | 11.4% |
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
sap_pos_transactions | import | 2m ago |
sap_inventory_shrinkage | import | 2m ago |
sap_labor_scheduling | import | 14m ago |
retail_inventory_weekly | import | 1h ago |
retail_google_ads_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_meta_ads_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_ga4_website_daily | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-default | permit | Model::* |
finance-read-shrinkage | permit | Model::"inventory_shrinkage" |
vendor-blocked | forbid | Model::"labor_*" |
region-west-only | permit | Tenant::"acme" |
What Ward has eyes on.
Ward reads sales orders, inventory, purchase orders from Epicor on a read-only connection. Nothing is written back, and your ERP configuration does not change. Epicor stays the system of record.
Know before the shelf empties. Ward runs the model continuously rather than on a reporting cycle, which is why a finding lands the morning the pattern starts instead of at the end of the period.
Why this combination
is its own problem.
Stockout Prediction needs sales orders and inventory at minimum. Epicor carries both, at the grain the model needs. That is the whole integration story: no middleware, no staging warehouse, no custom extract.
What the first 90 days
actually look like.
-
01
Week 1: connect
Read-only credentials to Epicor. Ward reads straight from sales orders, inventory, purchase orders and starts building baselines. First daily cards land inside 48 hours, before baselines are stable, so you can see the shape of the output early.
-
02
Weeks 2 to 3: baselines
Ward needs roughly two weeks of history per store to separate a real deviation from normal variance. During this window the daily cards are directionally right and the thresholds are still moving.
-
03
Weeks 4 to 12: steady state
Ward hands back cards every morning, each with the cause and a recommended move. Volume settles at a level a single person can read over coffee. The measure of success is not how many cards arrive, it is how many get acted on.
How Ward connects to Epicor
Ward integrates with Epicor for home improvement, furniture, and building supply retailers. Inventory, purchasing, production, and sales data power insight cards.
Setup: Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse.
Data Ward reads from Epicor
Impact metrics with Epicor
Data lake enrichment
Ward enriches Epicor data with: Sales orders, Weather & events, Contractor/Pro data, Competitor pricing, Vendor scorecards
Your P&L surprises are born on the store floor.
- ×Margin erosion only surfaces at month-end close
- ×Inventory carrying costs are a black box
- ×Working capital tied up in slow-moving stock nobody is watching
- ×Same-store sales comps lack decomposition into actionable drivers
- ×Capex decisions for store remodels lack unit-economics evidence
- ✓GMROI tracking by category with weekly insight cards
- ✓Inventory carrying cost alerts when capital efficiency drops
- ✓Working capital optimization recommendations based on turnover trends
- ✓SSS decomposition into traffic, conversion, and basket components
- ✓Store-level unit economics cards for capex prioritization
Inventory distortion, overstock and out-of-stock combined, costs retailers $1.77 trillion globally. Source: IHL Group
Frequently asked questions
Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse. Data points include: Sales orders, Inventory, Purchase orders, Customer accounts, Pricing tiers, Vendor performance.
Your P&L surprises are born on the store floor. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: GMROI tracking by category with weekly insight cards. Inventory carrying cost alerts when capital efficiency drops. Working capital optimization recommendations based on turnover trends.
First insight cards arrive within 48 hours of data connection. Ward needs approximately 2 weeks to establish stable baselines for your specific operation.
No. Ward sits on top of your existing stack. It is the proactive intelligence layer that watches your data continuously and delivers insight cards, so your team acts on findings instead of hunting for them.
Related solutions
See what stockout problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
Read-only to start · your LLM keys · SOC 2 Type II underway · or book a call directly
Find out what your data has been hiding.
Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.