Inventory Management – No drones required

I’m sure you’ve heard the commercials for that financial app that claims to save you hundreds of dollars each month—just by canceling subscriptions you forgot about. Like me, you probably stared at the wall thinking, really? What’s even scarier is that people actually are paying a subscription to use this app, so you see the irony?

That made me think more and more about how technology is becoming the worst type of clickbait. Let me explain.

The Clickbait Technology Trap

Every few years, there’s a new “must-have” technology: bitcoin, crypto, blockchain, drones, machine learning, and now AI. What you see are vendors racing to cram one of these buzzwords into a product simply to say they were first.

Vendors rush to be first with the “newest” technology because it sells headlines and demo slots. It’s less about solving real problems, and more about selling sizzle:

• Blockchain everywhere — even when there’s no reason to use it..
• Drones everywhere — pitched as the answer to countless problems, including inventory loss..
• AI Everywhere – This is getting crazy

These aren’t solutions. They’re marketing gimmicks that create more complexity, cost, and risk

The Sci-Fi Warehouse Problem

Recently I saw an ad for an inventory solution driven by drones flying around the warehouse to find lost inventory. Yeah started to stare at that wall again. Does anyone really believe the answer to better inventory management is turning your warehouse into a sci-fi movie set? If you need drones to find your products, the problem isn’t a lack of flying robots — it’s that your system already lost track of what should never have gone missing in the first place. You’re addressing the result and not the cause.

Our Approach: Never Lose It in the First Place

We take a different view. The best technology isn’t the flashiest — it’s the one that makes the problem go away before it ever happens.

For years we have worked with customers, to develop processes and implement systems that stress processes and checkpoints focused on inventory visibility, accuracy, and control at the source. Instead of chasing lost items after the fact, we help build systems that make sure your goods are never lost in the first place. No drones. No hype. Just confidence.

Take cycle counting, for example. Many auditors and managers outside of inventory management see it only as a way to find missing items or correct inaccurate inventory records. In reality, those are secondary benefits. The true purpose of cycle counting is to provide checkpoints that validate whether processes are working as intended. When counts expose a discrepancy, the value isn’t just adjusting the record — it’s tracing that discrepancy back to a broken process and fixing the process so it doesn’t happen again. This continuous improvement of processes is the key to true inventory accuracy not flashy tech.

By contrast, any automation whose only purpose is to find missing inventory is missing the point. Rather than addressing the process failures that allow inventory to be lost in the first place, it shifts attention to locating what has already gone missing. This creates a dependency cycle: as discrepancies persist, more time and resources are spent deploying drones to search for them, while the underlying issues remain unresolved. The result is a system that grows increasingly reliant on corrective effort instead of preventative control — a costly and unsustainable approach to inventory management.

Think of it like a bank. Every deposit, withdrawal, or transfer is tracked with tight process controls, so the bank can state with confidence how much cash it has at all times. Warehouses are no different: the goal isn’t to hunt for what’s missing, but to build systems that prevent loss in the first place.

The Bottom Line

True innovation isn’t about slapping the newest buzzword on an old problem. It’s about designing systems that quietly, reliably solve it — so you don’t need drones circling overhead to tell you what you should already know.

The next time you see a vendor pitching drones, blockchain, or whatever the next shiny trend may be, ask one simple question: Does this actually solve my problem, or is it just clickbait with propellers?

See our full portfolio of enterprise solutions designed to solve real problems — not create new ones. Our approach combines advanced software with process engineering and training to deliver lasting results.

AdvancedCount – Enterprise Inventory for SAP

AdvancedDock – Next Generation Dock and Yard Management