{"id":116352,"date":"2025-08-28T13:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/116352\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T13:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:59:10","slug":"how-a-16-year-old-company-is-easing-small-businesses-into-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/116352\/","title":{"rendered":"How a 16-year-old company is easing small businesses into AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid all the \u201cis this a bubble<\/a>?\u201d talk about artificial intelligence, the supply chain and logistics industries have become breeding grounds for seemingly genuine uses of the technology. Flexport<\/a>, Uber Freight<\/a>, and dozens of startups<\/a> are developing different applications and winning blue-chip customers.<\/p>\n

But while AI helps Fortune 500s pad their bottom line (and justify the next layoff to Wall Street), the right use of the tech is proving useful to smaller businesses.<\/p>\n

Netstock, an inventory management software company founded in 2009, is working on just that. It recently rolled out a generative AI-powered tool called the \u201cOpportunity Engine\u201d that slots into its existing customer dashboard. The tool pulls info from a customer\u2019s Enterprise Resource Planning software and uses that information to make regular, real-time recommendations.<\/p>\n

Netstock claims the tool is saving those businesses thousands. On Thursday, the company announced it has served up one million recommendations to date, and that 75% of its customers have received an Opportunity Engine suggestion valued at $50,000 or more.<\/p>\n

While tantalizing, one of those customers \u2014 Bargreen Ellingson, a family-run 65-year-old restaurant supply company \u2014 was initially apprehensive about using an artificial intelligence product.<\/p>\n

\u201cOld family companies don\u2019t trust blind change a lot,\u201d chief innovation officer Jacob Moody told TechCrunch. \u201cI could not have gone into our warehouse and said, \u2018Hey, this black box is going to start managing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Moody pitched Netstock\u2019s AI internally as a tool that warehouse managers could \u201ceither choose to use, or not use\u201d \u2014 a process he describes as \u201ceagerly, but cautiously dipping our toes\u201d into AI.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Moody says it\u2019s helping avoid mistakes, in part because it\u2019s sifting through myriad reports his staff uses to make inventory decisions. He acknowledged the AI summaries of this info are not 100% accurate, but said it \u201chelps create signals from the noise\u201d quickly, especially during off-hours.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image: Netstock<\/p>\n

The \u201cmore profound\u201d change Moody\u2019s noticed is the software made some of Bargreen Ellingson\u2019s less-senior warehouse staff \u201cmore effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

He highlighted an employee in one of Bargreen\u2019s 25 warehouses who\u2019s worked there for two years. The employee has a high school diploma but no college degree. Training this employee to understand all of the inventory management tools and the forecasting information Bargreen uses to plan inventory levels will take time, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he knows our customers, he knows what he\u2019s putting on the truck every day, so for him, he can look at the system and have this prosaic AI-driven insight and very quickly understand whether it makes sense or doesn\u2019t make sense,\u201d he said. \u201cSo he feels empowered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Netstock cofounder Kukkuk told TechCrunch that he understands the hesitancy around new technologies \u2014 especially because so many products are essentially mediocre chatbots attached to existing software.<\/p>\n

He attributes the early success of Netstock\u2019s Opportunity Engine to a few things. The company has more than a decade\u2019s worth of data from working with retailers, distributors, and light manufacturers. That data is tightly protected to adhere to ISO frameworks, but it\u2019s what powers the models that make the recommendations. (He said Netstock is using a combination of AI tech from the open source community and private companies.)<\/p>\n

Each recommendation can be rated with a thumbs up or thumbs down, but the models also get reinforced by whether the customer takes the suggested action or not.<\/p>\n

While that kind of reinforcement learning can lead to weird, sometimes harmful<\/a> results when applied to things like social media, Kukkuk said he\u2019s chasing different incentives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really care about eyeballs, you know?\u201d he said. \u201cFacebook and Instagram care about eyeballs, so they want you to look at their stuff. We care about: \u2018what is the outcome for the customer?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kukkuk\u2019s wary of expanding those interactions due to the limitations of current generative AI tech. While it might make sense for a customer to converse with Netstock\u2019s AI about why a recommendation is or isn\u2019t useful, Kukkuk said that could ultimately lead to a breakdown in accuracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tightrope to walk, because the more freedom you give the users, the more freedom you give a large language model to start hallucinating stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This explains the Opportunity Engine\u2019s placement in Netstock\u2019s typical customer dashboard. The suggestions are prominent, but easily dismissed. Google Docs cramming 20 AI features down a user\u2019s throat, this is not.<\/p>\n

Moody said he appreciated that the AI isn\u2019t in-your-face.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not letting the AI engine make any inventory decisions that a human hasn\u2019t looked at and screened and said, \u2018Yes, I agree with that,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIf and when we ever get to a point where they agree with 90% of the stuff that it\u2019s suggesting, maybe we\u2019ll take the next step and say \u2018we\u2019ll give you control now.\u2019 But we\u2019re not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a promising start at a time when many enterprise deployments of generative AI seem to go nowhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But if the tech gets better, Moody said he\u2019s nevertheless worried about the implications.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I\u2019m afraid of what this means. I think there\u2019s going to be a lot of change, and none of us is really sure what that\u2019s going to look like at Bargreen,\u201d he said. It could lead to there being fewer data science experts on staff, he suggested. But even if that means moving those employees out of the warehouse and into the corporate office, he said preserving knowledge is important.<\/p>\n

Bargreen needs people who \u201cdeeply understand the theory and the philosophy and can can rationalize how and why Netstock is making certain recommendations,\u201d and to \u201cmake sure that we are not blindly going down\u201d the wrong path, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid all the \u201cis this a bubble?\u201d talk about artificial intelligence, the supply chain and logistics industries have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,186,75417,26928,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-116352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-exclusive","12":"tag-inventory-management","13":"tag-supply-chain","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}