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CASE STUDY

Driving Working Capital Efficiency: How Milsons Optimized Inventory

Sales Dashboard.png

Industry: Manufacturing & Distribution

Solution Area: Working Capital & Inventory Optimization

Client: Milsons Fasteners Australia

Tools Used: Power BI, MYOB, ODATA Feed, Data Models

Business Impact

12 % reduction

in average inventory holding

​

​

18 % improvement

in stock turn, enabling faster replenishment and fewer stock-outs.

20 + hours/month

saved in manual Excel consolidation for warehouse teams.

The Challenge

Milsons Fasteners, a national distributor of industrial components, managed thousands of SKUs across multiple warehouses.

Inventory, COGS, and sales data sat in different MYOB modules, limiting visibility into:

  • Which stock groups were over- or under-turning?

  • How did average inventory trends compare with COGS and gross margin?

  • Which product lines tied up excess capital without contributing to profitability?

Finance and supply-chain teams depended on spreadsheets that could not reconcile inventory and COGS timelines accurately, making month-end analysis slow and error-prone.

Our Solution

GrowthBI developed a Power BI Inventory Performance Dashboard that connected directly to MYOB via ODATA feeds.

To enable this, Generic Enquiries were created within MYOB to expose key datasets—Inventory Balances, COGS Transactions, and Sales History—through ODATA endpoints accessible to Power BI. This eliminated the need for manual exports or intermediate databases, ensuring a live connection and automated data refresh.

Key Features:

  • Stock Turn & GMROI Report: Calculates turnover ratio, gross-margin return on investment, and average inventory by stock group in real time.

  • Trend Analytics: Tracks monthly movements in Average Inventory, COGS, and Gross Margin to reveal seasonal patterns and slow-moving items.

  • Profitability Segmentation: Classifies stock groups as High Turn / High Margin or Low Turn / Low Margin to guide purchasing decisions.

  • Warehouse Filters: Allows regional drill-downs for warehouse-level optimization.

Dashboard Walkthrough

1️⃣ KPI Summary Panel

Displays key monthly metrics — Average Inventory and Gross Margin— helping finance teams monitor capital efficiency.

2️⃣ Stock Group Breakdown Table

Highlights Stock Turn, GMROI, and Gross Margin by category

3️⃣ Average Inventory Trend

Evidence of improved inventory control.

4️⃣ COGS and Gross Margin Trends

Parallel visuals highlight COGS decline alongside margin stability — showing leaner purchasing without hurting profitability.

Milsons Dashboard.png

Technical Architecture & Process

Data Flow
MYOB (Generic Enquiries → ODATA Feed) → Power BI Data Model → Interactive Reports

Core Data Model Example

-- Stock Turn & GMROI CalculationSELECT
    StockGroup,
    SUM(COGS) / NULLIF(AVG(AverageInventory), 0) AS StockTurn,
    (SUM(GrossMargin) / NULLIF(AVG(AverageInventory), 0)) * 100 AS GMROI,
    AVG(AverageInventory) AS AvgInventory
FROM InventoryPerformance
WHERE Date BETWEEN @StartDate AND @EndDateGROUP BY StockGroup;

DAX Snippet for Dynamic Date Filtering:

SelectedPeriodCOGS :=
CALCULATE(
    SUM(Inventory[COGS]),
    DATESBETWEEN(
        Calendar[Date],
        MIN(Calendar[Date]),
        MAX(Calendar[Date])
    )
)

Conclusion

The Milsons Stock Turn Dashboard provided a single source of truth for inventory performance.

By leveraging MYOB Generic Enquiries via ODATA Feeds, Power BI could access live data directly, eliminating manual exports and reconciliation.

With real-time metrics and profitability segmentation, the finance and warehouse teams re-allocated capital from low-yield items to high-turn segments — strengthening cash flow and margin without increasing sales volume.

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