Inventory IQ connects to every ERP across your portfolio, unifies on-hand data, models statistical safety stock and reorder points, and surfaces exceptions the moment they breach your thresholds.
| Exception Type | Severity | Items | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overstock — 2x Lead Time | Critical | 412 | $1.8M |
| Severe Overstock — Stocked | Critical | 231 | $1.2M |
| Slow Moving — High Value | Warning | 89 | $0.6M |
| Low Supply — Risk Before Replen. | Warning | 156 | $0.3M |
When your portfolio runs three ERPs across five plants, no one sees the full picture. Planners maintain their own spreadsheets, reconciliation happens on weekly calls, and by the time numbers agree, the situation has already changed.
ERP safety stock fields are filled in at go-live and rarely revisited. The number bears no relationship to actual demand variability, supplier lead time reliability, or the service level your customers require. Items that should have 124 units are carrying 50. Items that need 42 are carrying 400.
A catalog of 2,800 active SKUs cannot be reviewed item by item. When everything looks the same, nothing gets real attention. Critical items stockout while low-value parts accumulate on shelves. Exception-based management only works if the exceptions surface automatically.
IQ Insights uses a large language model to read part descriptions across every ERP and understand what the item actually is: material, form, specification. Duplicates are resolved. Taxonomy is applied. And for every item in the master, an AI-generated brief explains its inventory health.
See how IQ Insights worksABCXYZ Segmentation
Treating every SKU equally is the fastest way to misallocate planning effort. ABCXYZ segmentation tells you which items to watch closely and which ones to let the system handle.
The ABC axis ranks items by cumulative annual consumption value: A items represent the top 70-80% of spend, B the next 15-20%, and C the remaining long tail. The XYZ axis measures demand variability using the Coefficient of Variation: X items are stable (CV ≤0.50), Y items are moderately variable, and Z items are highly erratic (CV >1.00).
The intersection of those two axes creates nine segments, each with a different stocking strategy. An A-X item needs tight safety stock monitoring and a high service level target. A C-Z item might be a candidate for rationalization or demand-driven replenishment. Inventory IQ classifies every active SKU into its segment automatically, period over period, using your actual ERP transaction history.
Because Inventory IQ runs daily, you also see segment drift as it happens. A part drifting from A-X to A-Z doesn't wait for a quarterly planning review to surface — it appears in the next report, flagged, with the consumption trend that explains why. Planners can adjust safety stock and service level targets before the instability becomes a stockout or an overstock event. Most businesses do ABCXYZ once a year in a spreadsheet. Marquis IQ runs it every day, automatically.
How Marquis IQ connects ERP transaction dataDemand Variability (XYZ) →
On Hand & Turns Monitoring
Most manufacturers running multiple ERPs have no shared view of inventory. Each site sees its own numbers. Corporate and operations teams piece together a picture from reports that never quite align.
Inventory IQ connects to every ERP, normalizes on-hand and turns data, and delivers one consistent view across the entire business. Each site continues to drive replenishment through its local ERP and MRP process. What changes is the global picture, and the quality of the signals feeding into it.
Calculated from actual ERP consumption records. A-X items require tighter buffers than C-Z items with erratic, low-value demand.
Derived from PO receipt history, not assumed. Consistently late suppliers trigger higher recommended buffers. Improving performance adjusts them down.
High-value, stable items carry higher service level requirements. The buffer matches what the business actually needs from each segment.
| Exception | Severity | Items | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Overstock — 2x Lead Time
On-hand exceeds 2x lead time demand. Capital tied up unnecessarily.
|
Critical | 412 | $1.8M |
|
Severe Overstock — Stocked Part
Active stocked item with on-hand >3x safety stock and declining demand.
|
Critical | 231 | $1.2M |
|
Overstock — Non-Stock Part
Part classified as non-stock has significant on-hand balance. Likely obsolescence risk.
|
Critical | 204 | $1.0M |
|
Slow Moving — High Value Part
No consumption in last 90 days with on-hand cost >$500. Review or write-down candidate.
|
Warning | 89 | $0.6M |
|
Low Supply — Risk Before Replenishment
Projected to stockout before next PO receipt at current demand rate.
|
Warning | 156 | $0.3M |
|
Intermittent — Possible Overstock
Z-segment item with on-hand exceeding 12 months of trailing demand.
|
Warning | 62 | $0.2M |
|
Tier 1-2 Regular Stockouts
High-priority items experiencing recurring zero on-hand events. Service level at risk.
|
Critical | 105 | $0M on hand |
Exception Management
Exception-based inventory management only works when the exceptions are defined precisely, surfaced automatically, and tied to the transactions that caused them.
Inventory IQ monitors every active SKU against seven exception rules, running against live ERP data. When a condition is breached, an exception is raised immediately with the item, the site, the responsible buyer, the severity, and the estimated dollar impact. No manual review required to surface the issue.
Every exception links directly to the underlying transactions. A planner seeing a Severe Overstock flag can drill into the purchase orders that created it, the demand history that drove the buy, and the supplier performance that justified the safety stock at the time. The data trail is there. The fix is visible.
Exceptions roll up to leadership with a single compliance metric: the percentage of items within stocking policy at any given moment. That number creates accountability without requiring anyone to review all 2,800 SKUs themselves.
See a live exception walkthroughStocking Compliance
Stocking compliance measures the percentage of each buyer's catalog that falls within policy at any given moment. It turns an abstract inventory target into a named, accountable metric.
Each buyer owns a set of items. Inventory IQ tracks the compliance rate for each buyer's portfolio continuously: items within safety stock policy divided by total active items. A buyer at 56% compliance has nearly half their catalog outside policy. That is a conversation, not a report.
The compliance view does not require a manual audit or a monthly meeting to produce. It updates from ERP data every period. When compliance drops for a specific buyer, it surfaces as an exception before it compounds into a larger supply risk or an overstock problem.
PE operating partners and supply chain directors see the same compliance summary. The number is one click away from the exception list that explains it.
See compliance by site and buyer| Buyer | Items | Compliance |
|---|---|---|
|
Grant Pembroke
412 in / 734 total
|
734 | |
|
Max Delaney
381 in / 776 total
|
776 | |
|
Ivy Whitmore
357 in / 758 total
|
758 | |
|
Nina Holloway
276 in / 633 total
|
633 | |
|
All Buyers
1,426 in / 2,802 total
|
2,802 |
The heavy lifting is done by Marquis IQ. Free your team from analysis paralysis and work from a common set of data and recommendations. Training our teams of production control analysts, planners and buyers was straightforward. To a person they felt more confident making decisions and could monitor outcomes, adjust and move forward.
Built on the Marquis IQ Platform
Inventory IQ is an add-on module. It runs on top of your existing Marquis IQ subscription and shares the same ERP connections, item master data, and supplier records.
The ABCXYZ segmentation runs through Item Enrich, Marquis IQ's master data layer. Every part gets a clean, deduplicated item record across all ERPs before segmentation scoring is applied.
Transaction-level consumption data flows from Explore, the Marquis IQ analytics layer, directly into the statistical safety stock calculation. No manual exports, no reconciliation step between systems.
Inventory IQ activates on your existing license. If your ERPs are already connected and your item master is clean, the module can be live within weeks. No separate data infrastructure required.
Schedule a demo and we'll walk through Inventory IQ running on real manufacturing data. Bring your supply chain team and your most recent exception report. We'll run the ABCXYZ segmentation and safety stock comparison live.
No commitment. We'll tell you honestly if Inventory IQ fits your situation.