Useful whether or not you ever buy from us.
Most of evaluating distribution software is working out what you actually need. This section is written for that job: straight answers, a shared vocabulary, and checklists you can take into any vendor conversation — including one with us.
Start here if you have five minutes.
The four questions that decide whether a conversation is worth having.
Do we have to replace our ERP?
No. Wholara sits above it and writes confirmed operational transactions back. Most customers keep their ERP for items, ledger and statutory records.
How long does it take?
First workflow in weeks, not quarters, assuming reasonable data. The critical path is usually integration and data reconciliation, not configuration.
What does it cost?
Scoped to catalogue, locations, order volume and integration surface. No per-seat pricing. You get a written proposal with assumptions stated.
Will the AI make decisions we cannot see?
No. Every recommendation shows its inputs. You decide what the agent may commit to without review, and every action is attributable and reversible.
Questions and answers.
Grouped by what you are trying to work out. If your question is not here, ask us directly.
Buying and fit
No. Wholara is an operating layer that sits above your systems of record. Your ERP keeps items, customers, costs, the general ledger and statutory history. Wholara takes on the operational decisions and repetitive work, then writes confirmed transactions back.
Independent and regional distributors: typically $3M–$50M revenue, 5,000–50,000 active SKUs and one to twenty locations. The design assumption is a business with a real warehouse operation and no in-house development team.
If your core problem is production scheduling rather than buy-hold-sell, if you need retail point-of-sale for consumer trade, if you are a drop-shipper with no held inventory, or if you want a bespoke on-premise build. We also are not a BI platform — Wholara reports operationally but does not replace your analytics stack.
There is a longer fit assessment on the solutions page.
The evaluation path is a demo on your own data, then a scoped proposal, then a first workflow implemented with a parallel run against your current process. Observed parallel running is a better test than a generic trial tenant, because it compares outcomes on your real orders rather than on sample data.
No. Per-seat pricing discourages giving warehouse, counter and management staff the access they need. Plans are scoped on catalogue size, locations, order volume and integration surface. Details are on the pricing page.
No. Wholara only produces value when it is configured around a real operation, with your catalogue, suppliers, price agreements and rules. A self-serve login would create an unconfigured account that tells neither of us anything useful.
Implementation
Order validation and pricing checks are useful as soon as current records are loaded, because they only need today's data. Replenishment and forecasting improve as history accumulates: usable within the first weeks, materially better after a full seasonal cycle.
Expect concentrated involvement from a small group: an operations owner, a purchasing lead, a commercial lead and an IT or ERP partner contact. The heaviest periods are data reconciliation and rule configuration. Most customers find the rule configuration unexpectedly valuable, because it forces decisions that were previously implicit.
It usually is, in some dimension. Duplicate items, inconsistent units, missing supplier references, prices in spreadsheets. We clean what can be cleaned automatically, flag what needs a business decision, and tell you plainly what is not usable. Data work is a scoped part of implementation rather than an unspoken assumption.
Yes, and for a first workflow we would insist on it. The parallel run compares outputs against your existing process and documents the differences, so cutover is a decision made with evidence rather than optimism.
Role-based sessions using your own catalogue, warehouses and history — not a generic demo dataset. Buyers, warehouse staff, inside sales and management each get training on the workflows they will actually use, plus written procedures for the first weeks.
How it works
Statistical methods for demand patterns and lead-time variation, because they beat a fixed reorder point. Your commercial rules — service targets, margin floors, approval limits, substitution policy — are explicit configuration, not model inference. Every recommendation traces back to its inputs and the rules version in force.
There is a worked example in how it works.
Accuracy varies by item, and any vendor quoting a single number is guessing. Steady, high-volume lines forecast well. Intermittent and project-driven demand is inherently harder, so Wholara handles those differently: it holds cover against lead-time risk and supplier constraints rather than pretending to predict the unpredictable.
You adjust or reject it, and the rejection is recorded. That feedback improves the rules and highlights where configuration does not match reality. Because agent actions are ordinary records, a committed action can be reversed like any other edit — the history stays intact either way.
Only inside limits you set. A typical starting configuration lets the agent commit to purchase orders under a value threshold for stocked items from approved suppliers at agreed costs. Anything above the threshold, any new item and any non-approved supplier goes to a named buyer. See the control model.
Yes — inbound and outbound trade documents including purchase orders, acknowledgements, advance ship notices and invoice data. Exact document sets and trading-partner profiles are confirmed during scoping. Details are on the integrations page.
Yes. Targets, stocking policy, delivery cut-offs and approval limits can be set globally, per location, or per category within a location. Explicit local exceptions are configurable; they simply appear as exceptions in the audit trail rather than being applied by habit.
Security, data and terms
Wholara is a hosted multi-tenant platform with your data logically isolated from other customers, encrypted in transit and at rest. Single-tenant and region-specific hosting are available on enterprise terms. Our privacy policy sets out what we collect and why.
Yes, on request at any time and on termination, in documented formats. Exit terms, retention and deletion timelines are written into the service agreement rather than left to interpretation.
Email and password with optional multi-factor authentication is standard. SAML and OIDC single sign-on is available on enterprise terms, along with scoped credentials for integrations and IP allow-listing where required.
Rolling monthly and annual agreements are both available; annual is common because it aligns with an implementation programme. Enterprise terms covering service levels, retention, data processing and exit provisions are agreed in writing during procurement. See our terms of service.
You own your data. The configuration — service targets, thresholds, pricing precedence, approval chains — is yours to change, and changes are versioned and attributed so self-service remains accountable.
The measures, defined properly.
Half of every software evaluation is agreeing what the words mean. These are the definitions we use, and the ones worth holding a vendor to.
On hand, minus committed stock, plus inbound stock that will arrive in time. The number a salesperson should actually be quoting from.
Order lines delivered complete and on the promised date, as a share of all lines promised. Different from fill rate, and the one customers judge you on.
The share of order lines shipped from stock on first attempt, before substitutions or backorders. A purchasing and warehouse measure.
Current available stock divided by recent average daily consumption. Meaningless without stating which demand window was used.
Gross margin return on inventory investment: gross profit divided by average inventory cost. Tells you whether a category earns its shelf space.
Cost of goods sold divided by average inventory value over a period. Always check whether the period and the valuation basis are stated.
Stock with no consumption in a defined period, usually 90 or 180 days. The definition matters: a slow-moving seasonal line is not the same as a dead one.
Stock with no realistic prospect of sale — superseded, obsolete or held for a customer who no longer buys it. Different from aged stock, and handled differently.
Purchase price plus freight, duty, handling and any other cost incurred to get goods into your warehouse. The only cost on which margin should be calculated.
A quantity at which a supplier's price changes. Buying past a deal break can be right, but the extra cover and cash should be a deliberate decision.
Minimum order quantity a supplier will accept. A constraint on replenishment, not a recommendation in itself.
Goods picked and staged for customer collection rather than delivery. Needs separate staging visibility or it becomes a source of lost stock.
An order line that could not be fulfilled and remains outstanding. The distinction between a backorder and a cancelled line is where customer trust is lost or kept.
Supplying an equivalent item in place of the one ordered. Legitimate where the customer's own rules allow it, and a source of returns where they do not.
The fully loaded cost of picking, packing, delivering and administering an order. The reason a profitable-looking account can lose money.
Supplier income earned as purchase volumes pass agreed thresholds. It affects true cost, so it belongs in margin calculations rather than in a year-end adjustment.
Evaluation guides and checklists.
Written to be used in any vendor conversation, not just ours.
Scoping your first automated workflow
The single most common cause of a failed rollout is starting too broad. This is how to pick a first workflow that proves value without destabilising the operation.
- Does the workflow run at least weekly, so you get feedback quickly?
- Is the current process documented well enough to compare against?
- Can you measure the outcome with data you already keep?
- Is there one person who owns it and can make decisions about it?
- Would a mistake here be recoverable, or existential?
A good first workflow usually scores yes, yes, yes, yes, recoverable.
The data readiness checklist
Most implementation delay comes from data issues that were discoverable in advance. Check these before you commit to a timeline.
- Item master with consistent units and no duplicate codes for the same part
- Supplier records with agreed costs and reference part numbers
- Customer price agreements held somewhere structured, not in individual files
- Twelve months of order and receipt history available for extract
- Stock records that reconcile to the last physical count
- One person accountable for each of the above
Missing items are not disqualifying, but they change the sequence and the effort.
Questions to ask any distribution software vendor
Including the ones where the honest answer is uncomfortable for us too.
- Where does your product end and my ERP begin? If the answer is unclear, you will own the ambiguity.
- Which of my systems have you actually integrated with? Ask for the specific version, not a category.
- What does implementation cost, and what happens if it overruns?
- Who at my company has to own this after go-live? A vendor that says "nobody" is selling a demo.
- What happens to my data if we stop? Formats, timeline and any fee.
- Which of my requirements can you not meet today? The answer tells you more than the feature list.
Building the business case with your own numbers
How to construct a credible financial case without optimistic assumptions.
Step 1 — Establish the baseline: stock value, service level, margin, emergency freight, admin hours.
Step 2 — Value the cash released from stock using your actual cost of capital, not a headline percentage.
Step 3 — Convert margin points recovered into gross profit on current revenue.
Step 4 — Treat hours saved as capacity, and state explicitly what that capacity is for: growth, service or cost.
Step 5 — Subtract the full cost: licence, implementation, your team's time and the cost of running two processes in parallel.
Want these as a working document? Ask on the demo call and we will send the checklist in a form you can fill in and share internally — vendor-neutral, with our answers filled in as an example rather than a benchmark.
Five pressures reshaping distribution operations.
Not predictions about technology. Descriptions of what distributors are already dealing with.
1. Customers buy in more channels, with less patience
The same account orders by EDI on Monday, through a portal on Wednesday and by phone on Friday, and expects identical pricing and availability across all three. Order intake has become a data problem rather than a clerical one — and it lands on a team that has not grown.
2. Supplier reliability is deteriorating, not improving
Lead times are longer and more variable than they were, and confirmed dates slip more often. Static reorder points set in a calmer decade now produce both stockouts and overstock in the same catalogue, and the fix is measuring actual supplier behaviour rather than trusting the promised number.
3. Working capital is more expensive
Carrying stock costs more than it used to, which changes the arithmetic on slow-moving lines. Depth of range that was defensible at low rates is now a cash decision, and it has to be made line by line rather than as a blanket policy.
4. Experienced people are retiring with the knowledge
The buyer who knows which lines are genuinely seasonal, and which customer always wants the alternative part, is closer to retirement than to their first day. Written rules in a system outlast the person who used to carry them in their head.
5. Margin is being competed away from the outside
Marketplaces and direct-to-contractor channels put pressure on price for the lines that are easy to compare, while the margin on everything else depends on service, availability and the cost of getting the order out of the door. The defensible ground is operational precision, which is a systems problem before it is a sales one.
Product reference index.
Direct routes to the parts of the site people ask for most.
Still deciding? Ask us the hard questions.
Bring the checklist from Guide 03 to a call. We will answer every line, including the ones where the answer is "not yet".
wholara.net