AR Platform Settle Acquires Turbine for Inventory Management

Settle, an operations platform for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, acquired enterprise resource planning (ERP) firm Turbine.

Settle incorporated Turbine’s inventory operations and forecasting capabilities with its cash flow platform to expand its procurement and inventory management suite, according to a Tuesday (Oct. 1) news release. The result is a unified operating platform that streamlines payments, purchasing and financing to help omnichannel brands scale faster and more profitably.

Disconnected systems burden operators with additional hours of work, including manual tasks like consolidating data, the release said. When workers are overwhelmed, accuracy can be impacted, causing a lack of visibility down to SKU levels.

“Brand operators report they have to manually update on average five separate systems to update one single SKU,” the release said. “This results in costly errors, stockouts and an incomplete handle on margins.”

Settle’s goal is to help small businesses use their inventory and finance operations to grow, CEO and founder Alek Koenig said in the release.

“As the first and only integrated platform built specifically for CPG brands, Settle is dedicated to helping omnichannel brands scale from idea to shelf, including access to the same transparent financing we are known for — on one, unified platform,” Koenig said in the release.

The new platform will also use artificial intelligence-powered inventory forecasting to increase accuracy and reduce manual guesswork, according to the release.

Through machine learning models, brands can predict demand for existing product sets, receive suggested timelines for ordering finished goods and raw materials, and predict lead times based on historical data, per the release. Clients can create a balance between avoiding stockouts and maintaining healthy cash flow by minimizing excess inventory and reducing the risk of lost sales.

Koenig spoke to PYMNTS in August about the importance of automated cash flow management.

“It is incredibly difficult for CPG businesses to plan,” he said. “And one of our jobs here should be to give them the tools to be able to plan better and make smarter decisions.”

The Settle platform is designed to provide a comprehensive view of cash flow. At the heart of the Settle CPG suite is accounts payable automation.

“There’s a lot of work financial and operations people are doing over and over and over … automation can make that a lot easier for them and give them time back,” Koenig said.

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