How to Automate DDI System (Inform ERP)

Every plant's bin stock is counted inside Inform

An industrial distributor gets paid for being closer than the internet. A maintenance supervisor does not want the cheapest bearing, they want the right one today, because a line is down and every hour of it has a number attached. That is the business: bin stock on the customer's shelf, a blanket order behind it, and a branch that picks up the phone.

Inform ERP is the system that runs that model. DDI System writes it for wholesale distributors, and DDI is now part of Advantive, with ddisystem.com redirecting to Advantive's DDI System pages. The customers are janitorial and sanitation, bearings and power transmission, HVAC, fasteners, hose and accessory, foodservice equipment, paper packaging and door hardware houses.

Inside a branch it holds everything at once: inventory, purchasing, order fulfillment, pricing, financials, warehouse logistics and an embedded CRM, with Inform WMS out on the floor. When a supervisor calls about a part, the counter person is looking at one screen.

The promise date arrives by phone, if it arrives at all

The trouble starts at the edge of that screen, where the vendors are.

A buyer needs to know whether the pump promised for Thursday is still coming Thursday. That answer is on the manufacturer's distributor portal, or it is nowhere and it is a call to a rep who will call back. A spot buy for something nobody stocks means three quotes from three different sites and a follow-up on each. An obsolete part number needs a cross-reference from whichever supplier still lists it.

Then the recurring ones. A contract price agreement coming up for renewal that has to be checked against the manufacturer's current published list. A blanket order whose remaining balance the customer disputes. Safety supply usage a plant's EHS manager wants summarized before an audit. A bin-stock route counted on Tuesday where the reorder still has not gone out.

Every one is a login or a hold tone, and a buyer with fifteen browser tabs open.

DDI System (Inform ERP)

Promise dates that are checked, not assumed Open purchase orders looked up on each vendor's own portal overnight, so the morning list is only the handful whose dates moved.

Contract renewals priced before they roll Every agreement near renewal repriced from what the manufacturer publishes today, weeks before anybody has to sign the next one.

Blanket balances agreed with the customer Remaining quantities confirmed on the plant's own procurement portal, so the dispute at invoice time never gets started.

Inform's price matrix and dashboards stop at Inform's own tables

Inform is not short of automation, and any fair account of it should start there.

Strategic Customer Pricing carries a built-in price matrix with unlimited pricing scenarios, Strategic Margin Protection maintains sell prices off the previous sale's margin without a contract to set up, and Customer Rebate Tracking handles customer net pricing and vendor rebated costs together. Advanced Inventory Management runs forecast algorithms with exception management for buyers. Warehouse Logistics adds a drag-and-drop delivery truck dispatch board, scheduled cycle counting, container tracking, and workflow automation with label printing. Paperless Workflows cover document scanning and signature capture, the embedded CRM keeps a calendar with related transactions and activity tracking, and drill-down reporting produces role-specific dashboards and reports on an automatic schedule.

Every one of those runs on Inform's own tables. A scheduled report will tell you which blanket orders are running low. It cannot tell you that the manufacturer's lead time on the replenishment went from two weeks to nine, because that number was never sent to you.

Blanket PO balances and lead times, checked while you sleep

Inform already knows what to ask about. The gap is that asking means going somewhere else.

Take the open purchase orders. Inform holds the line, the quantity and the date that was promised; the vendor's portal holds what is actually going to happen. Checked overnight, the morning list is not every open order but the handful whose dates moved, which is the difference between a buyer reacting on Monday and a plant finding out on Thursday.

The rest is the same move aimed at different pain. Contract pricing renewals set against the manufacturer's current published list before an agreement rolls over at the old numbers. Blanket order balances confirmed on the plant's own procurement portal, so the argument at invoice time never starts. Spot buy quotes chased across the three sites they were requested from and set side by side. Obsolete part numbers cross-referenced against live catalogs so the counter has a substitute ready.

The division of work is obvious once it is written down. Looking things up, comparing them with Inform and drafting the follow-up can run unattended. Committing a purchase order, agreeing a price or telling a plant manager anything stays with a person.

Two hours of tab-flipping turn into a morning list

Fifteen tabs is a real job, and somebody at the branch does it every morning. It is just not a job anybody was hired for.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in the way your buyer signs in. It opens the manufacturer's portal, the customer's procurement site or the carrier's tracking page, reads what is on the screen, and lines it up against the orders Inform already holds.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, locked to an explicit list of domains, and you can watch a run and stop it. Anything that commits money or reaches a customer is drafted for approval. Each workflow below names the sites it opens.