Managing inventory and transforming data into actionable insights is much easier with the right tools.

Inventory Planner and Glew are two highly regarded platforms, each offering specialized features for inventory forecasting and analytics to help businesses run more efficiently.

To simplify your decision, we’ve created a detailed comparison of their features and services.

Whether you’re looking to optimize inventory or gain deeper e-commerce insights, this analysis will help you find the solution that best fits your goals.

Let’s dive in!

Inventory Planner vs Glew highlights: The main differences

For a quick overview of the main differences between Inventory Planner and Glew, check our table below.

Inventory Planner: Overview

Inventory Planner is a leading inventory planning software designed to streamline stock management, improve profitability, and enhance decision-making.

Its tools fall into three major categories:

• Demand forecasting and purchasing: Advanced forecasting capabilities provide proactive purchase recommendations, helping businesses avoid overstock and stockouts while optimizing cash flow.
• Analytics and reporting: Built-for-retail analytics offer detailed insights into sales trends, contribution margins, and customer metrics, empowering smarter strategic decisions.
• Integrations and automation: Seamlessly sync with 200+ platforms, including Shopify, Amazon, and QuickBooks, for real-time data consolidation and automated purchase orders.

Inventory Planner: Key features

Let’s explore some of the standout features of Inventory Planner.

1. Inventory Forecasting

Forecasting is a core feature of Inventory Planner, designed to help businesses predict customer demand precisely and adapt to market fluctuations.

Key aspects of this feature include:

• Custom forecasting models: Tailored to diverse product types, including seasonal and non-seasonal items, retail, and wholesale products.
• Automated trend adjustments: The system analyses sales patterns to ensure inventory levels align with shifting consumer preferences.
• Safety stock optimization: It helps you fine-tune coverage days to reduce overstock and prevent stockouts.
• New product forecasting: Predict demand for new items by referencing similar products, minimizing risks associated with over or under-ordering.

This level of insight empowers businesses to make informed purchasing decisions, align marketing efforts with inventory availability, and maintain profitability even during unpredictable market conditions.

2. Purchasing Products

Purchasing feature in Inventory Planner empowers businesses to make strategic buying decisions, align inventory with marketing initiatives, and optimize shipping and storage costs to protect profitability and cash flow.

Key aspects of this feature include:

• Automated buying recommendations: Provides precise purchasing suggestions for all SKUs, driven by up-to-date demand forecasts, saving time and reducing errors.
• Prioritized purchasing decisions: Enables focus on critical reorders using key metrics like forecasted lost revenue, forecasted lost profit, and sell-out dates.
• Shorter purchasing cycles: Helps improve cash flow by tailoring purchasing frequencies, shortening cycles for easy-to-get items, and managing supply constraints for others.
• Supplier management: Centralized platform to seamlessly manage suppliers, scale orders to meet vendor requirements, and streamline procurement processes.
• Multi-location planning: This service offers intelligent recommendations for purchasing and transferring stock across warehouses, retail stores, and fulfillment centers to maintain optimal balance.

3. Reporting

Inventory Planner’s reporting features deliver detailed insights, making inventory and sales data more actionable.

With over 200 metrics available, businesses can make data-driven decisions tailored to their needs.

1️⃣ Customized reporting
Reports can be tailored to specific needs, allowing segmentation by:

• Location (e.g., North American warehouses).
• Product categories (e.g., customer favorites).
• Periods with flexible comparisons for detailed performance evaluations.

2️⃣ Overstock identification
Easily identify overstocked items with insights such as:

• Last sold date.
• Overstock costs.
• Units to liquidate, helping protect cash flow by prioritizing excess inventory reduction.

3️⃣ Purchasing prioritisation
Inventory Planner highlights items to reorder first by analyzing:

• Forecasted lost revenue.
• Forecasted lost profit if reordering is delayed.

4️⃣ Marketing integration
Syncs with platforms like Google Analytics to:

• Align marketing campaigns with inventory performance.
• Refine webstore merchandising using metrics like page views and sales trends.

5️⃣ Open-To-Buy planning
Advanced tools for:

• Budget planning by month or retail week.
• Metrics like previous revenue, expected margins, and required units to meet goals.

4. Analytics

Inventory Planner’s analytics tools provide businesses with consolidated performance data, empowering teams to make smarter decisions, boost profitability, and align strategies across departments.

• Unified marketing insights: Combine marketing and sales data to measure campaign performance and maximize ROI.
• Tactical recommendations: Implement tailored product insights to boost store profitability.
• Real-time inventory data: Align campaigns with stock availability to avoid stockouts and disappointed customers.
• Seasonal trends: Use historical data to plan for peak periods and align marketing with customer preferences.
• Budget optimization: Allocate marketing spending efficiently by focusing on high-margin or in-demand products.

Inventory Planner: Pricing

Inventory Planner offers pricing starting at $249.99/month, with a transparent structure based on your annual revenue to ensure accurate and fair costs.

Inventory Planner: Pros & Cons

🟢 Advanced demand forecasting for accurate inventory management.

🟢 Over 200 metrics for detailed performance insights.

🟢 Multi-location recommendations for stock transfers and orders.

🟢 Centralized supplier management for seamless procurement.

🟢 Integrates marketing campaigns with inventory availability.

🔴 Higher pricing may not suit small businesses.

🔴 Risk of overstocking if demand forecasts misfire.

🔴 Limited integrations compared to larger ERP systems.

Glew: Overview

Glew is an end-to-end commerce analytics platform designed to centralize and streamline data across your business.

It connects over 170 integrations, automates data management, and provides actionable insights tailored to e-commerce, retail, and multi-brand businesses.

Key features include:

• Commerce data cloud: Centralises data for marketing, sales, finance, and operations in a single platform.
• Custom reporting: Offers out-of-the-box reports and no-code customization for business-specific insights.
• Data accuracy: Ensures reliable, real-time analytics with automated ETL and intelligent data warehousing.
• Multi-channel visibility: Aggregates data across multiple brands and channels for comprehensive performance tracking.

Glew: Key features

Let’s explore some of Glew's features.

1. Daily snapshot

The Daily Snapshot feature provides automated reports with a comprehensive overview of the previous day's performance:

• Daily KPIs delivered: Key metrics such as revenue, orders, gross profit, and conversion rates are sent to your inbox every morning.
• Benchmark comparisons: Evaluate daily, weekly, and period-over-period performance for trend analysis.
• Growth identification: Highlight opportunities, such as top-performing marketing channels or best-selling products.
• Issue detection: Identify and address challenges like declining conversion rates or increasing refund volumes.

2. Custom reports

This feature provides businesses with flexible and scalable tools to create tailored reports and dashboards, ensuring data insights meet evolving needs.

• Data source integration: Connect and transform data from pre-built connectors, custom integrations, or table uploads.
• Custom dashboards: Build reports using SQL, Python, or R tools to answer complex analytics questions.
• Detailed segmentation: Drill down into data using filters for customer analysis, revenue reporting, and more.
• Comprehensive aggregation: Combine reporting from online and offline channels, geographic locations, and multiple domains.

Custom reporting empowers marketing, operations, and finance teams to make smarter, data-driven decisions by turning complex data into actionable insights.

3. Scheduled reports

Glew's scheduled reporting feature simplifies data sharing by automating the delivery of reports and insights across your organization.

1️⃣ Customizable report delivery

• Schedule reports for daily, weekly, or monthly delivery to any email address.
• Send one-time reports immediately or automate recurring reports based on your needs.

2️⃣ Flexible data segmentation

• Filter and group data by day, week, or month for customized insights.
• Use metrics, visualizations, and tables to create precise reports for any department.

3️⃣ Multi-purpose formats

• View reports in interactive mode or export them as PDFs for offline sharing.
• Add notes to emailed reports for additional context and personalized delivery.

4️⃣ Streamlined decision-making

• Surface insights for sales, marketing, customers, products, and inventory without manual effort.
• Easily identify year-over-year and period-over-period trends for informed business strategies.

4. Subscription analytics

Glew’s subscription analytics provide businesses with actionable insights to optimize subscription-based models and improve profitability.

1️⃣ Comprehensive subscription tracking

• Monitor key metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), churn rate, and lifetime value (LTV).
• Break out subscriptions and one-time purchases or view them together for a unified analysis.

2️⃣ Retention and churn insights

• Track subscriber retention over time to identify patterns.
• Pinpoint products and plans that contribute to customer churn for proactive adjustments.

3️⃣ Profitability analysis

• Sync Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) data for an accurate view of subscription profitability.
• Understand the long-term impact of subscriptions with detailed LTV insights.

4️⃣ Plan performance optimization

• Identify high-value plans to drive acquisition and retention.
• Manage subscriber frequencies like weekly, monthly, or custom intervals for better cash flow projections.

5. E-commerce dashboards

This feature provides businesses with unified, multichannel dashboards for a comprehensive view of ecommerce performance, streamlining analytics across all data sources.

• Data integration: Eliminate silos by connecting ecommerce platforms, advertising channels, web analytics, fulfillment, and support tools in one dashboard.
• Pre-built insights: Instantly access KPIs such as revenue, profit, orders, ad spend, lifetime value (LTV), and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Customer and product segmentation: Use customer tags and product segments to drive targeted marketing strategies and optimize inventory planning.
• Journey optimization: Track the entire customer journey –from campaign to conversion to retention – for smarter decision-making.
• Holistic reporting: Aggregate data from subscription businesses, product performance, and multichannel sales for a single source of truth.

Glew: Pricing

Glew offers flexible pricing plans, including Glew Pro for advanced insights and Glew Plus for fully managed custom reporting and data warehousing.

Glew: Pros & Cons

🟢 Centralizes data from 170+ integrations into one platform.

🟢 Offers advanced subscription analytics with key metrics like MRR and LTV.

🟢 Provides customizable reports and dashboards for tailored insights.

🟢 Includes multichannel ecommerce dashboards for a unified performance view.

🟢 Supports automated ELT processes for seamless data validation and integration.

🔴 Pricing may be higher for small businesses with limited budgets.

🔴 Customization features may require technical expertise for advanced use.

🔴 Relies on connected integrations, which can limit functionality if sources are unavailable.

Inventory Planner vs. Glew: The final verdict

Inventory Planner and Glew are powerful tools that address different business needs in inventory management and commerce analytics.

If your primary focus is optimizing inventory levels, avoiding stockouts, and improving demand forecasting, Inventory Planner may be the better option. 

Its features streamline purchasing and inventory planning processes, making it an excellent fit for businesses prioritizing stock control and operational efficiency.

On the other hand, Glew excels in providing comprehensive analytics and reporting, especially for e-commerce businesses. 

Its ability to centralize data from 170+ integrations and deliver detailed insights into customer, product, and marketing performance makes it ideal for businesses seeking to leverage data for strategic decision-making.

However, if you're looking for a solution that blends inventory management with advanced analytics while offering seamless integration capabilities and scalability, there’s another platform to consider.

Enter Fabrikatör!

Fabrikatör — A versatile analytics alternative to Inventory Planner and Glew

Fabrikatör is an inventory and supply planning platform designed to bridge the gap between demand forecasting and supply chain management. 

With a robust set of features, it empowers businesses to reduce stockouts, optimize inventory levels, and make data-driven decisions with ease.

🔥 Advanced demand planning

Fabrikatör transforms demand forecasting into a seamless and powerful tool for optimizing your Shopify supply chain.

With AI-driven insights and custom planning features, it bridges the gap between supply and demand, ensuring your business stays ahead of customer needs.

This feature includes:

• Advanced demand planning: Predict future demand accurately with AI algorithms that analyze past sales and seasonal trends.
• Marketing integration: Align inventory with marketing campaigns to avoid stockouts and maximize sales opportunities.
• Customizable supply planning: Adjust purchasing decisions with data-backed insights that support your growth goals.
• Real-time inventory visibility: Track purchase orders and restocking times for each SKU, product group, or collection to maintain ideal stock levels.
• Adaptive replenishment: Automate purchase orders and adapt plans to changing conditions, lowering supply chain costs and boosting efficiency.

🔥 Adaptive replenishment and supply planning

Streamline your purchasing process with Fabrikatör’s automated tools for creating and managing purchase orders.

Save time, reduce costs, and keep your inventory on track with these smart features:

• Data-driven purchases: Use future demand forecasts to plan purchases and create POs with a single click, ensuring you order the right quantities at the right time.
• Track incoming inventory: Gain visibility into future inventory levels by factoring in incoming stock, forecasts, and trends so you’re always prepared.
• Reduce logistics costs: Based on your projected demand and stock levels, choose the most cost-effective freight options, such as air or sea.
• Automate backorders: Sell out-of-stock items while in transit, recover lost sales, and increase revenue by up to 10%.

🔥 Custom reports and dashboards

Transform your data into actionable insights with Fabrikatör’s powerful reporting and supply chain tools.

Designed for simplicity and effectiveness, these features help you take control of your business intelligence:

• Custom reports made simple: Access 100+ real-time metrics and filters to create personalized reports, no data expertise needed.
• Build your dashboard effortlessly: Gather key insights into a central dashboard to align your team and track essential metrics at a glance.
• Full-stack supply planning: Use Fabrikatör as your virtual operations manager to highlight risks and opportunities while keeping your supply chain efficient.
• Optimize logistics costs: Compare freight options and choose the best route to balance speed, cost, and inventory needs.

🔥 Seamless integrations

Fabrikatör integrates effortlessly with leading platforms, ensuring a smooth workflow:

• Compatible with Shopify and ERP systems.
• Automate inventory syncing and track data across sales channels.

Are you curious to see Fabrikatör in action? 

Try Fabrikatör or get a demo, and transform your inventory management with advanced analytics, automated workflows, and smarter purchasing decisions.