Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Numi Solutions: Numi is a supply chain software that solves the short-term firefighting problem in the supply chain. That means when there are external disruptions on the demand or supply side, the question arises: what impact does that have on my supply chain? For example, if my risk of going out of stock increases, I can’t deliver customer orders or I have to reschedule production orders. And we solve these problems with Numi by pulling transactional data from existing systems and enriching it with externally available data, for example with CRM systems for better market signals or supplier data to get more accurate forecasts of when goods will arrive.
This combination then forms the basis for Numi to provide daily action recommendations. For example, do I need to create an express purchase order to avoid stock out, or do I need to increase my sales price to dampen demand a bit? The user can then validate this recommendation through our software and play it directly back into the ERP system.
Munich Startup: But that’s already existed for ages!
Numi Solutions: Most supply chain software providers focus on creating medium-term plans, such as demand or supply plans. We, on the other hand, try to optimize decisions in the supply chain that occur on a daily basis through linked data and algorithms, and in a second step, to automate them.
Numi helps with predictive supply chain planning
To do this, we also integrate external events into our tool. For example, we’ve connected a Salesforce system through which we can identify projects in advance and estimate the probability of whether a project will come through. Then we can provide certain products in advance. Another example is the integration with our customers’ IoT devices. This allows us to see for each machine where it is located, how many machine hours it has run, and so on. This allows us, for example, to anticipate maintenance needs and then proactively suggest which products need to be stocked. In this way, we integrate data from within the company as well as from external sources into supply management and create recommendations.
For the user, this means they receive daily recommendations from our system as soon as they log in. For example, if a stock out is expected in the future because the lead time for a product has increased significantly. Or also in inventory reduction, if the ERP system assumes a lead time of two months, but we expect it to only take one month. We then give the user the option to simulate that and play the results back into their ERP system. This makes Numi an intelligent add-on to ERP systems to optimize the supply chain – and of course with as little manual effort as possible for the user.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Numi Solutions: We both met at supply chain consulting firm Barkawi Management Consultants in Munich. We spent six years optimizing supply chains there and through joint projects, we saw how the other worked. We noticed that the major supply chain technology providers only cover the medium to long-term planning horizon. But when it comes to making faster, agile decisions, users basically always resort to ERP transactions and Excel. Both of us thought, there must be a smarter solution for that.
Focus on mid-market companies with low implementation effort
What added to that was that these large providers are often not economically viable for smaller and mid-market companies, or their time to value is very long. That’s why we wanted to focus from the start on low implementation effort and address mid-market companies.
In the meantime, we also work with various management consulting firms that focus on supply chain. They benefit especially from the simulation capabilities of our software. This represents enormous added value for the consultants.
Munich Startup: What were your biggest challenges so far?
Numi Solutions: Our biggest challenge, like with most B2B companies, is sales. Especially when it comes to major decisions with many stakeholders from supply chain management – that usually takes time. We’ve experienced everything, from a demo meeting where the contract was signed immediately after, to waiting 3/4 of a year until we finally got the signature. And as a bootstrapped startup, we had to quickly win the first customers so we could finance Numi from our revenues. Fortunately, we’re now at a point where we have enough run rate so we don’t depend on external financing. Now we also have a bit more time to develop the tool according to our ideas and those of our customers.
“We’ve actually had only positive experiences”
Munich Startup: Where do you want to stand in one year, where in five years?
Numi Solutions: We’ve recently restructured our software architecture so we’ve laid the foundation for further scaling. This allows us to focus on customer acquisition in the coming year. Of course, we also have many other ideas for product development. In five years, we want to have built a sustainable and profitable company where our team enjoys working.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Numi Solutions: We’ve actually had only positive experiences. There are plenty of offers for young entrepreneurs and young founders. It started for us with the Exist founder grant, which was run through the TU München. This gave us a lot of security at the start to develop the product we wanted to develop. Then we were in the TUM Venture Labs for Software and AI, and here too the support, especially from Antoine Leboyer, was very good, which allowed us to quickly get in touch with the right contacts for us. The SAP Accelerator SAP.iO also provided us with good input, especially on the product side. And now we’re in Werk1.
“The ecosystem here is fantastic”
The ecosystem here in general is fantastic. It feels like everyone knows everyone and you can network well. Or you bump into each other in the hallway or over a coffee. It’s incredibly fast to reach the people who can help you here, and you can quickly exchange ideas with them. That’s fun and accordingly, we’re happy that our office ended up here at Werk1.
Munich Startup: Outsource or do it yourself?
Numi Solutions: We outsource administrative tasks like payroll and accounting. Tasks like product development, sales and marketing, or customer communication we do ourselves, of course. This allows us to focus on the tasks that move us forward and do what we do best – optimize supply chains. And we’ve been doing pretty well with that approach so far.
