Fishbowl
Streamlining the Inventory Management Process

Effective inventory management positively impacts every aspect of a business by ensuring accurate order fulfillment and proper management of warehousing costs. However, optimizing inventory operations is a task easier said than done—given the fact that many businesses still rely on manual inventory tracking methods and spreadsheets. Needless to say, these procedures are time-consuming, prone to error, and never allow for proper visibility into inventory, expenses, cash flow, and revenue.

Enter Fishbowl. Founded in 2001, the company offers robust manufacturing and warehouse inventory management software that equips clients with the capability to manage inventory at multiple locations and quickly pick, pack, and ship products. In an interview with CIO Applications, Kendrick Hair, Vice President of Development at Fishbowl, shares his insights on how their cost-effective solutions streamline the manufacturing and warehouse processes and help companies manage their inventory.

Could you give us an overview of Fishbowl?

In 2001, we designed Fishbowl to manage all the inventory, manufacturing, and workflow processes within an organization. Our tools help with timetracking for assembly processes, materials management, inventory procurement, purchase order process, manufacturing workflow, and selling of finished goods.

Our cutting-edge software can easily integrate with QuickBooks and Xero accounting platforms that help in keeping accounting records updated. It also offers EDI integrations, accounting integrations, and e-commerce integrations with shopping carts such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Walmart, Amazon, and eBay to update the inventory records whenever a sale is recorded. It also imports information on the salesperson, carrier, payment terms, and tax rate on each order from these e-commerce platforms. Additionally, Fishbowl can be connected to CAD software such as SOLIDWORKS to pull the materials data and part information—making the entire forecasting process more seamless.

Who are your typical clients, and how are you helping them?

Although our primary focus is SMBs, we serve organizations of all sizes—from small boutique manufacturing to large-scale production businesses across different industries such as food and beverages, electronics, and heavy industrial manufacturing. For example, we have customers who produce customized items only such as snowplow manufacturers. On the other hand, we have customers who deal with the mass production of specific items such as anode rods for water heaters.

Many startups that are still in their R&D phase and haven’t launched their products yet utilize Fishbowl to manage and build processes and research aspects for bringing their products to the market faster.

On the other hand, long-term manufacturers usually use Fishbowl to upgrade their systems and achieve more visibility into their inventory. We import all the data of their existing parts list and bill of materials and then train them to use the software. Depending on the size and requirements, we offer both remote and on-site training.

Could you elaborate on the functionalities and features of Fishbowl?

The key add-on to our solution is Fishbowl Time that helps with labor and job costing. This time clock solution allows employees to clock in and out on virtually any internet-connected device—be it Android or iOS. This flexible solution helps clients tackle project management, overtime, paid time off, to name a few. More importantly, it easily integrates with Fishbowl Manufacturing and Fishbowl Warehouse. As a result, businesses can better manage all their expenses pertaining to labor costs or total product costs.

Our other offering is Fishbowl Go—barcoding and mobile scanning software that is used in the warehouse for picking, packing, shipping, receiving, finishing work orders, and cycle counting items. It also has a shipping and delivery module that has the option to accept a signature or take an image of the individual receiving an item.

Another important additional product is Fishbowl ShipExpress that is built into Fishbowl Manufacturing and Fishbowl Warehouse and provides businesses access to UPS, FedEx, USPS, and many other national and international carriers. So, businesses can price shop to get the best rates.

What are the key differentiators that set you apart from your competitors?

We always listen to our customers and prospects to continually improve and create software solutions based on real-world usage. This keeps us ahead of the competition. We are an employee-owned organization and do not have to deal with a board that is often hyper-focused on revenue over the functionality of solutions. Our developers visit clients’ sites themselves to analyze their workflow. That’s why they can understand the issues, make necessary improvements, and personalize the functionalities and offerings.

More importantly, our experts architected Fishbowl’s interface in such a way that it eliminates the number of clicks for users. Our name reveals our mission—to help businesses have visibility into their processes.

Could you give us a customer success story?

For a Florida-based manufacturer of a custom vehicle, East Coast Defender (ECD), our solution turned out to be a game-changer. They retrofit Land Rover Defenders of the sixties and seventies era by rewiring them and adding a Corvette motor and a Camaro 6-speed automatic transmission. They were struggling to handle their inventory and manufacturing processes as they grew extensively in a short span and didn’t have proper systems to manage these operations on a large scale. The manual and traditional tools that they were relying on for data tracking and handling daily tasks were time-consuming and not sufficient to obtain accurate results.

Using Fishbowl, they could configure and create a bill of materials that captured all the necessary parts and materials needed to rebuild a product. Marrying the materials availability and production availability, our software enabled them to purchase material on time and schedule everything in the process accurately. We also automated several mundane tasks associated with inventory and manufacturing management that allowed them to understand the material requirements within the manufacturing process.

What does the future look like for Fishbowl?

Listening to clients’ feedback, we are continually enhancing our product line. We are adding new functionality to Fishbowl Time to streamline the labor management or capture labor cost for a work order. Further improving our manufacturing suite, we look forward to a better QC and QA process for work order fulfillment. Our present process only allows clients to finish a work order. But we want to provide our clients the ability to capture signatures and have more visibility and oversight from a management perspective.