Manufacturing, Inventory & Operations Stack Guide
Connect your shop floor, material tracking, and accounting without the multi-million dollar price tag of legacy ERPs.
How This Stack Fits Together
Production Planning & Live MRP
Visual shop floor scheduling, multi-level bill of materials, batch tracking, and raw material reorder points.
- Static Excel spreadsheets for WIP inventories
- Untracked batch expiry dates causing product waste
Automated Financial Ingestion & OCR
Direct receipt OCR extraction, supplier statement reconciliation, and automated line-item GL coding.
- Manual paper invoice data entry
- End-of-month reconciliation fire drills
Commercial Operations & Customer Contracts
Wholesale customer tiers, B2B reordering portal, and custom enterprise master agreements.
- Disconnected sales pipelines where reps promise non-existent stock allocations
Compatibility With Your Existing Enterprise Systems
This reference stack is engineered to connect seamlessly with core systems midmarket and enterprise teams already operate—including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Slack, Snowflake, Stripe, Microsoft 365, and Okta—via native REST webhooks, OAuth 2.0, and SCIM provisioning with zero redundant middleware subscriptions.
Katana Cloud Inventory ➔ Dext Data Sync
Real-time webhook protocol mapping showing trigger events, payloads, and automated target actions.
| Step | Origin / Trigger | Event & Handshake | Target Destination | Action Taken |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Supplier Invoice Received | Email forward to Dext processing inbox or mobile scan | Dext OCR Engine | Automated record sync |
| 02 | Dext Matching Engine | PO Number Validation & Sync | Katana Purchase Order Record | Automated record sync |
Logistics & Manufacturing: 3-Year Benchmark (25 Seats)
Comparing legacy monolithic enterprise suites against a connected modular stack with native automation.
| Architecture Strategy | Base License (Annual) | Add-ons & API Overages | Year 1 Total | Year 3 Total | Cost Variance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy All-In-One Enterprise Suite | $80,000 | $14,400 | $94,400 | $283,200 | Baseline |
| Connected Modular Stack (Native Sync) | $36,250 | $0 (Native Webhooks) | $36,250 | $108,750 | Save ~62% ($174,450) |
*Data based on verified enterprise rate cards and standard API quota tiers. Modular setups eliminate third-party middleware subscriptions and custom ETL maintenance costs.
Frequently Asked Architecture Questions
Can cloud MRP software handle complex, multi-level Bills of Materials (BOM)?
Yes. Modern platforms like Katana natively compute sub-assembly dependencies, automated shop-floor routing, and material availability in real time.
How do automated OCR invoices synchronize with inventory receipts?
Dext extracts the supplier invoice metadata and syncs directly to accounting/ERP records, enabling automated 3-way matching between PO, delivery receipt, and vendor invoice.