Founding Engineer, Permute
Kartik Deshpande
Founding engineer at Permute. Writes about consolidation, close reporting, and the parts of finance and commercial work that never make it into a dashboard.
16 articles
- For Consumer BrandsAI inventory planning needs a durable stock positionClaude and ChatGPT can analyze an inventory export and explain a reorder formula. Reliable planning still depends on a durable position across four sources.·5 min read
- For Consumer BrandsAI trade promotion analytics needs a shared recordPromotion measurement becomes defensible when the plan, shipments, sell-through, and spend resolve to the same account, products, and dates.·6 min read
- For Consumer BrandsCPG demand planning starts with the sales historyEvery forecast is a statement about the past. Most of the error in a CPG forecast is inherited from a history assembled by hand each cycle.·5 min read
- For Consumer BrandsDemand forecasting automation for ecommerce brandsAutomation can assemble and maintain the sales history a forecast runs on. It cannot tell you what a launch with no comparable past will sell.·7 min read
- For Consumer BrandsDemand forecasting mistakes rooted in sales historyThe total landed close and the SKUs underneath it were wrong in both directions. Most of the named errors turn out to be one error, inherited from the history the forecast was measured against.·8 min read
- For Consumer BrandsHow to automate POS data analysisScheduling the retailer exports is the smaller half of the job. The product mapping and the calendar underneath them are where the week goes.·7 min read
- For Consumer BrandsHow to automate Shopify reports on a scheduleShopify will schedule what Shopify knows. The weekly report that gets opened needs cost, ad spend and wholesale alongside it.·5 min read
- For Consumer BrandsInventory planning automation: what to automate firstTeams try to automate the reorder decision and stall. The automatable part is the assembly that happens before anyone decides anything.·5 min read
- For Consumer BrandsPrice pack architecture software needs comparable unitsThe decision is which pack sizes sell at which price in which channel. Most of the work is making one pack comparable to another.·6 min read
- For Consumer BrandsSKU-level margin analysis across channelsChannel margin changes when freight, fees, trade spend, returns, and pack conversions are attached to the SKU that incurred them.·5 min read
- For Consumer BrandsTrade spend management software has to close the loopFollow one promotion from the plan to the deduction on the remittance. Whichever tool closes that loop is the one worth buying.·6 min read
- For Consumer BrandsVendor scorecard software needs defensible inputsA scorecard is only as good as the fill rate underneath it, and fill rate is a definition before it is a number.·6 min read
- For Consumer BrandsCPG analytics software starts with product identityThe categories that show up in an evaluation are built for different jobs, and which one fits depends on how many places your sales history lives.·6 min read
- For Fractional CFOsCash flow forecasting software for fractional CFOsThe choice depends on whether you need a forecast, an FP&A model, or governed cash visibility across client systems.·7 min read
- For Fractional CFOsHow to automate monthly client financial reportsA report becomes repeatable when source connections, metric definitions, and client commentary stop being rebuilt in one workbook every month.·7 min read
- For Fractional CFOsMonth-end close: a step-by-step process that scalesThe month end close process that survives the tenth client is built differently from the one that just survived the first.·8 min read