Increased Forecast Accuracy 
Reduced Manual Order-Review Time
Improved Reliability of Purchase Order DataChallenges: Manual Forecasting, Static Thresholds & Limited Store-Level Visibility
Opus Art Supplies runs seven stores and an e-commerce site across roughly 20,000 SKUs, sourced from local suppliers with three-day turnarounds to overseas partners on three-month lead times, all flowing through one central warehouse that also operates as a retail location and the fulfillment hub for online orders. As the business grew, the purchasing team built strong expertise forecasting from sales history in Excel, and saw a clear opportunity to bring that same expertise into a system that could move faster — connecting purchasing decisions directly to what each store needed, and giving them a repeatable way to plan ahead for seasonal shifts and new store rollouts.
Solutions: ConverSight Agentic Decision Intelligence for AI Demand Forecasting and Purchase Order Optimization
AI Demand Forecasting
Athena generates SKU-level forecasts from 24 months of sales history, refreshed monthly and reviewed before it drives any purchase order.
Recommended Purchase Orders by Vendor
On-hand inventory, open POs, vendor lead times, and forecasted demand combine into a single ranked recommendation of what to order, how much, and by when
Proactive Monitoring and Alerting
A dedicated data-load monitoring layer and daily alerting were added so the team knows immediately if a recommendation is out of date, not after the fact
Estimated Loss & Stockout Alerts
Critical shortages are flagged before they cost a sale, ranked by dollar impact and lead time
Athena, ConverSight’s AI Employee
Instant answers to inventory and sales questions, reducing time spent building manual reports
Athena AI
| Manual, spreadsheet-driven purchase orders on static min/max thresholds | AI demand forecasting with daily recommendation refresh |
| Stockout risk tracked informally across SKUs | Shortages quantified by dollar impact and lead time |
| Fragmented reporting across disconnected supply chain systems | Unified supply chain visibility across purchasing, inventory, and sales |
| Purchasing decisions confined to the warehouse level | Foundation built for store-level demand fulfillment |
The recommended purchase order storyboard is what we build our purchases around now. It’s not a report we glance at, it’s how we make the call, every single day. It’s given our team a level of confidence in purchasing that we simply didn’t have before, and that’s changed how we plan for the business going forward.
Susannah Blundell, Director of Purchasing & Logistics, Opus Art Supplies
Industry:
Retail — Art & Craft
Company Type:
Private
ERP:
Acumatica
