[eCommerce & SaaS Series] Smarter Forecasting, Fewer Stockouts, and More Cash Flow With Ara Ohanian

Ara Ohanian is the CEO of Netstock, a global provider of AI-powered inventory optimization and supply chain planning software for mid-market businesses. An experienced B2B SaaS and enterprise software leader, he brings deep insight into the challenges companies face when managing inventory, forecasting demand, and scaling operations. Ara leads Netstock’s mission to help businesses reduce stockouts, lower excess inventory, and unlock working capital. He has held executive roles at Systech, Unite Us, Infor, and Dubilier & Co., bringing broad expertise across supply chain, ERP, compliance, and growth strategy.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:29] Ara Ohanian explains Netstock’s mission to modernize inventory planning for mid-market companies
• [6:11] How Netstock integrates with ERP systems to add predictive inventory visibility
• [11:12] Using demand signals to move inventory across warehouses and markets
• [15:07] Why pricing, promotions, and shelf life make retail forecasting more complex
• [20:33] Building a customer-focused culture around transparency, empowerment, and mission
• [28:32] Ara shares leadership lessons on curiosity, mentorship, and building an enduring business

In this episode…

Inventory can either fuel growth or quietly drain cash from a business. When companies rely on spreadsheets or outdated planning systems, they risk tying up working capital in the wrong products while missing demand for the right ones. So how can growing businesses forecast smarter, reduce stockouts, and keep cash moving?

Ara Ohanian, a seasoned B2B SaaS and enterprise software leader, says businesses need better visibility into what inventory they should have in the future, not just what they have today. He highlights the importance of using predictive planning tools to help companies make faster decisions when demand shifts, supplier costs change, or disruptions hit the supply chain. The main impact is more efficient inventory management, fewer missed sales, and less working capital tied up in excess stock. Instead of relying on manual spreadsheets, businesses can use AI-powered insights to anticipate demand across warehouses, markets, and product categories. This gives mid-market companies a stronger chance to compete with larger enterprises that have historically had access to more sophisticated planning resources.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz speaks with Ara Ohanian, CEO of Netstock, to discuss smarter forecasting for inventory and cash flow. Ara explains predictive ERP overlays, demand planning across warehouses, and retail forecasting challenges like pricing, promotions, and shelf life. He also shares leadership lessons on culture and curiosity.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Ara Ohanian on LinkedIn
• Netstock
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras

Related episodes:

• “[SaaS Series] Cloning Minds With Dara Ladjevardian of Delphi” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[AI & Agency Series] AI-Powered Lead Generation and Automation for Agencies With Ken McLoud” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Netstock’s mission is to basically bring sophisticated tools that typically are available only to large enterprises for managing their supply chain.”
• “We end up becoming a partner to help them manage their supply chain better and grow faster.”
• “It basically gives them a tool that automates looking forward and predicts how much they should have.”
• “Sometimes having excess is a great idea. Sometimes it’s really the dumbest idea in the world.”
• “Culture is not a poster that you put on your wall. It’s a conversation.”

Action steps:

1. Move beyond spreadsheet-based planning: Mid-market companies can improve inventory decisions by using predictive tools that show what they should have, not just what they currently have.
2. Use forecasting to protect working capital: Smarter demand planning helps businesses avoid tying up cash in the wrong products while reducing the risk of stockouts.
3. Build visibility on top of existing ERP systems: ERP platforms show current and past inventory, but predictive overlays help companies plan for future demand across warehouses and markets.
4. Respond quickly to supply chain disruptions: Tariffs, weather events, pricing changes, and geopolitical issues can shift demand and supply, making agile replanning essential.
5. Create a culture of transparency and empowered decisions: Strong teams need shared values, openness, and the freedom to make decisions without fear of mistakes.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Ara Ohanian. You can check out Netstock, Netstock.com and I’m going to formally introduce Ara in a second. But I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the, we’ll call it, it’s part of the software series that we do. But you know, there’s some AI built into there too. So we could say AI and software. So some of the interesting ones I’ve done on that front, Dara is the founder of Delphi.ai and it says a clone. It clones your audio and video. It used to be video. Actually, I think it’s just audio now. So you create a clone of yourself so people can ask questions. So I actually interviewed Dara’s video clone for the interview, and then I actually interviewed him for 15 minutes on top of that. But it’s really interesting, you know, software as far as that goes.

We talked with Ken McLoud about just AI powered lead generation and automation, which was a great episode. And on the SaaS side of things, the co-founder of Zapier was on. That was a good episode. One of the co-founders of Pipedrive was on and Jotform, and I remember the Jotform founder talked about just growing to 25 million users and talked about the freemium model, like why and the pricing and the, you know, how they started with free and got escalated to people paying. So very interesting, more episodes than InspiredInsider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that by on, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability and flow execution production. Number two, an easy button for a company’s gifting. So we make gifting staying top of mind to be clients, partners, prospects. It could be staff from a culture perspective. Just send us the list. We’ll do everything else. And we don’t send like logos or things on mugs Ara typically, but we like to send food. You know, you Netstock actually powers a lot of, you know, food related products. So we’ll have to check out what you guys ship and order a bunch of that. But we ship out foodstuff to our best relationships. And that for me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. So I always want to give to them. I found no better way than to profile the people I admire in the podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail. So check out Rise25.com.

I am super excited to introduce our Ara Ohanian. He’s the CEO of Netstock. Netstock is an AI supply chain planning disruptor. Previously, he’s a multiple time CEO of tech segment leader and supply chain planning, ERP, track and travel. And excited to have him talk about Netstock and a little bit of the journey. So Ara, thanks for joining me.

Ara Ohanian: 03:21

Great. Thanks for having me, Jeremy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:23

So let’s start off. I’m going to pull up Netstock right now. But just tell us about Netstock and what you do.

Ara Ohanian: 03:29

Absolutely. You know Netstock’s mission is to basically bring sophisticated tools that typically are available only to large enterprises for managing their supply chain and bring it to companies in the mid-market. And typically, the reason that’s important is that supply chains are getting more unpredictable. And it’s very difficult to take your working capital and put it in the right products at the right time to have them ready to sell. And so what Netstock does, it helps mid-market companies instead of planning their inventory of products on spreadsheets.

It basically gives them a tool that automates looking forward and predicts how much they should have of what product at what time. And by doing that, they’re able to unlock working capital that typically gets trapped in sometimes on the poor inventory decisions and, and unlocking of that capital and putting in the right products allows them to grow faster. So we end up becoming a partner to help them manage their supply chain better and grow faster.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:32

You know, I find it’s really a non-sexy thing that makes things work because, you know, these businesses suck. Like, you know, you have to invest a lot of cash in inventory. And if they don’t have that on hand, then it’s interesting because I was leading this mastermind of some of the top e-commerce founders, and the more they sell, the more they have to they have even more demands on inventory and their cash. So it’s a very important issue people have to really account for.

Ara Ohanian: 05:07

Absolutely. If you look large enterprises have data scientists. They have experts who are mathematical experts who can do linear regression and look at what is the likelihood of a product running out or not running out, and what the demand against that product would be. And they spend tons of money. And in fact, it’s gone from expert to also expert systems then to AI.

But if you’re a smaller business, typically you’re on a spreadsheet and you find the best you can and things change all the time, whether it’s a big ship stuck in the Suez Canal or whether it’s a weather pattern that changed something, or whether a particular good that you’re having manufacturing has tripled in price. All these things make a big difference as to whether you have the right product at the right time to be able to fulfill an order for a customer.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:55

Well, I know you have integrations, right? I mean, some of these companies are using different tools. And so can you talk about how Netstock over lays with some of these different tools. So gives them more visibility in their supply and, you know, inventory planning?

Ara Ohanian: 06:11

Absolutely, absolutely. Jeremy. You know, if you think about the smaller businesses as they get more medium sized and, you know, depending on what market, you may be a business that’s between $10 million in revenue to $1 billion. And you could still be in that mid market. But typically at some point, a business needs an ERP and enterprise resource planning. So, you know, one knows most of the names that a sage oracle. And, and, and there’s a number of them out there. And, but the ERP is really good at telling you what you have and what you had. It’s very, it’s not really good at telling you what you should have.

And this is where, so, for instance, once they have an ERP, they know exactly how many units of what product they have in what warehouse and so on. But if someone asks them, say, are you sure you have enough red socks in zone C in X quantity and X sizes? Or do you have enough pet food that is cat food versus dog food in a certain place? And in three weeks from now or three months from now, will that number that you’ve planned be the right one? That’s where they come short.

So companies like us, we sit on top of that data, and we have predictive models that say that calculate what you should have versus and take a system that shows you the present. And we give them a sense of what the future should have.

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