Initially known as Web Component Trading (WCT) and operating as WCTbid.com, the company name was changed to FreeFlow in late 2005. The new name underscores the company's focus on not only identifying at-risk inventory for its customers, but also on allowing that inventory to "flow freely" through the sales channels. In mid-2006, expanding from its inventory liquidation and recycling roots, FreeFlow announced FreeFlowAuctions.com, a hosted, online, private auction solution that customers can use to standardize their sales and operations planning (S&OP) process of identifying at-risk inventory. This standardization drives all constituents to act on moving the idle inventory before it loses its market value, and to automate the disposition of the inventory. With the solution, user companies should be better able to manage active and idle inventory in order to maximize the life cycle profitability of their products, as the solution aims at enabling user companies to lower the amount of financial reserves needed, reduce the overall amount of write-offs (sometimes by several million dollars), and improve their bottom line every quarter.
Featuring a fairly user-friendly dashboard, FreeFlowAuctions integrates with a user company's S&OP process, providing automated list upload and approval routing capabilities. Password security access gives executives control over update capabilities for inventory quantities and pricing. The dashboard provides executives with at-a-glance views of key metrics such as product revenue performance, price recovery performance, and margin analysis of active and idle inventories by region or by product. Automated triggers notify executives of critical changes and provide significant time savings that would have previously been spent seeking approvals for inventory liquidations by phone or fax. FreeFlowAuctions also provides management with audit trails that show comprehensive bid histories and transactions.
This solution is in sharp contrast to the dominant, customary practices of so many enterprises that continue to address at-risk inventory on an ad hoc basis, thereby missing the opportunity to maximize the life cycle profitability of each product. In other words, FreeFlowAuctions platform aims at helping customers to implement decisive operational processes on a regular, repeatable basis to accomplish this very goal. To that end, FreeFlow will build the auction site for clients and take responsibility for the site and the sale. The user company effectively outsources all of the administration hassle to FreeFlow, who assumes the risk and does not allow credit to any participating bidding party.
Featuring a fairly user-friendly dashboard, FreeFlowAuctions integrates with a user company's S&OP process, providing automated list upload and approval routing capabilities. Password security access gives executives control over update capabilities for inventory quantities and pricing. The dashboard provides executives with at-a-glance views of key metrics such as product revenue performance, price recovery performance, and margin analysis of active and idle inventories by region or by product. Automated triggers notify executives of critical changes and provide significant time savings that would have previously been spent seeking approvals for inventory liquidations by phone or fax. FreeFlowAuctions also provides management with audit trails that show comprehensive bid histories and transactions.
This solution is in sharp contrast to the dominant, customary practices of so many enterprises that continue to address at-risk inventory on an ad hoc basis, thereby missing the opportunity to maximize the life cycle profitability of each product. In other words, FreeFlowAuctions platform aims at helping customers to implement decisive operational processes on a regular, repeatable basis to accomplish this very goal. To that end, FreeFlow will build the auction site for clients and take responsibility for the site and the sale. The user company effectively outsources all of the administration hassle to FreeFlow, who assumes the risk and does not allow credit to any participating bidding party.
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