Businesses operating warehouses recognise the vital importance of an effective inventory management system to maintain seamless operations. However, even if things have been under control for a long time, as businesses progress and expand, the need for more sophisticated tools becomes key for a successful venture.
Effective inventory management is crucial for several reasons: It helps optimise cash flow by reducing excess inventory, enhances customer satisfaction by ensuring product availability, and lowers operational costs by minimising storage and carrying expenses. Additionally, it enables businesses to make data-driven decisions, streamline supply chain operations, and respond quickly to market changes.
Inventory management is at the centre of your business, and it ultimately contributes to increased profitability and competitiveness.
If you’re looking for the right system to help your business grow and are trying to decide between Cin7 vs Unleashed vs SEQOS, this is for you.
Cin7 vs Unleashed vs SEQOS: What They Offer
What is Cin7?
Cin7 is a cloud-based inventory management software designed to help businesses efficiently manage their inventory, orders, and supply chain operations. It is a complete solution that provides tools and features for various aspects of inventory management and e-commerce, making it suitable for a wide range of businesses, from small startups to larger enterprises.
C7 is a great choice for e-commerce companies dealing with complex inventory requirements, multiple sales channels, and a need for integration with other business systems.
What is Unleashed?
Unleashed is a cloud-based inventory management software designed to help businesses efficiently manage their inventory and supply chain operations. Similar to Cin7, Unleashed provides a comprehensive set of tools and features for inventory management, making it suitable for a variety of businesses, including small to medium-sized enterprises and larger corporations.
Unleashed is a great fit for businesses in manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and retail.
What is SEQOS?
SEQOS is a specialised warehousing management system (WMS) that aims to simplify the complexity of managing a warehouse. It was founded in 1987 by a team with extensive experience in logistics and retail.
SEQOS serves a range of industries including 3PL, retail, e-commerce, manufacturing, and education, but they specialise in industries that need to comply with high standards and regulations such as food, perishables, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and hazardous goods.
Cin7 vs Unleashed vs SEQOS: Features Comparison
While Cin7, Unleashed, and SEQOS offer some similar features in their inventory management systems, they shine —and sometimes struggle— in different areas. Let’s dive deeper into some of these aspects:
Time Inventory Tracking
Time inventory tracking keeps track of the movement of inventory throughout its lifespan, from the moment it is received to the moment it is shipped and delivered. Tracking is an important part of inventory management, as it helps your businesses avoid stockouts, reduce overstocking, and improve efficiency and consequently profitability.
- Cin7 offers real-time inventory tracking, inventory history, and forecast to identify potential future issues and plan according to observed trends.
- Unleashed offers most of the same tracking as Cin, but without the forecasting features. However, it can be configured to send alerts when inventory levels reach certain thresholds, which Cin7 doesn’t do.
- SEQOS offers detailed tracking of every single item in your inventory be it for returns, regulation compliance, or expiration dates with the usual features, plus a special focus on Audit Trail to pass difficult inspections.
Winner: It’s a tie. They all get it done well and the differences will matter more or less depending on the type of products you manage.
Ease of Use
Cin7, Unleashed, and SEQOS are all enterprise-grade inventory management platforms, so they are all designed to be easy to use for businesses of all sizes. User-friendliness is crucial to ensure that the software is intuitive and can be used by your team with minimal training and that issues can be solved promptly.
- Cin7 is an extensive platform that may require a learning curve, but it provides a range of resources for users, with online training sessions and thorough documentation. However, don’t expect them to hold your hand through the onboarding process.
- Unleashed is a more user-friendly platform than Cin7. It is designed to be easy to use for businesses of all sizes, even smaller ones just getting started with inventory management software.
- SEQOS offers rapid implementation with processes designed to be easy to use, plus personalised support. This means that even if you encounter an issue or don’t immediately understand something, they will walk you through it quickly.
Winner: Tie between Unleashed and SEQOS. The first is easier out of the box, but the second offers better customer support as they are more responsive and have direct contact support.
Regulatory Compliance
If your business operates in a regulated industry, confirm whether the software you are researching offers features to assist you in meeting your obligations.
- Cin7 offers Audit Trails, security features for data protection, and standard regulatory compliance tools for things like taxes and reporting.
- Unleashed offers pretty much the same as Cin7 in this department.
- SEQOS offers dedicated compliance support to help businesses comply with regulatory requirements. They can guide compliance requirements and help you develop and implement compliance programs for highly regulated industries.
Winner: Specialising in highly regulated industries, SEQOS has the most robust set of tools for regulatory compliance, as well as experience with highly complex industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and hazardous items and materials.
Scalability
Consider whether the software can accommodate your business’s current needs and future growth. Does it have enough robustness to grow with you? And if so, how easy is it to adapt it as you go? Scalability here refers to the software’s ability to handle an increasing amount of work, users, or data without a significant drop in performance or the need for a complete overhaul of the system. It’s about ensuring that your software can meet your current and future business needs and grow with your organisation cost-effectively and efficiently.
- Cin7 can handle multi-location inventory management, multi-currency support, advanced reporting, and analytics, plus customisable workflows for specific business needs.
- Unleashed offers multi-location inventory management, multi-currency support, and advanced reporting and analytics, but no custom workflows.
- SEQOS can be custom-built and adapted for scalability, plus you can go from cloud-based to on-premise whenever you deem it necessary if your business grows beyond what one solution can handle.
Winner: The moment your business gets too big or too complex and you start looking for either an on-site or most custom system to manage your needs, SEQOS has you covered. It’s the only out of these companies that offers both cloud-based and on-premise solutions.
Integrations
When choosing a new inventory management system, you should always make sure it can integrate with your existing systems, such as accounting software, e-commerce platforms, or third-party logistics services.
- Cin7 integrates with over 200 business software applications, including accounting software, CRM software, and e-commerce platforms. Cin7 also offers a variety of custom integration options, so businesses can integrate their system with any business software application.
- Unleashed integrates with over 100 business software applications, including accounting software, CRM software, and e-commerce platforms. Unleashed also offers a variety of custom integration options, but they are more limited than the custom integration options that are available in Cin7.
- SEQOS integrates with over 50 business software applications, including accounting software, CRM software, and e-commerce platforms.
Winner: Based on sheer volume, Cin7 has the upper hand, but they all offer a robust set of integrations. Which one is better for you will depend on which specific integrations your business needs.
Customisations
It’s important to assess the degree to which the software can be customised to fit your unique workflows and requirements. It’s also essential to check for compatibility with trusted tools you’re already using and don’t plan to replace.
- Cin7 offers a wide range of customisation options, including custom fields, custom reports, and custom workflows. It also offers a variety of APIs that can be used to integrate it with other software and systems.
- Unleashed is also customisable, but not to the same extent as Cin7. It offers a variety of custom fields and custom reports, but it does not offer custom workflows. It also offers plenty of APIs that can be used to integrate it with other tools you already use.
- SEQOS can be custom-built for your needs, beyond standard APIs and plugins. They will offer their expert advice to optimise your workflow and work one-on-one with you to create a custom-fit system.
Winner: SEQOS will personally work with you to meet all your business needs and build a customised solution that fits your business, no matter how complex it is.
Support and Training
You should always investigate the level of customer support, training resources, and documentation provided by each company before you need them so you can avoid costly headaches down the road.
- Cin7 offers a variety of support options, including phone support, email support, and live chat support. They also have a variety of training options, including online training, in-person training, and custom training. However, customers have complained about slow responses and not always dealing with knowledgeable personnel right from the onboarding.
- Unleashed offers phone support, email support, and live chat support. They also offer a variety of training options, but they are more limited than their competitors.
- SEQOS offers personalised support, and they prioritise quick responses to avoid disruption to businesses. They have a great reputation for prompt support among businesses.
Winner: When it comes to personalised support, SEQOS has no match. They work closely with their clients and are really invested in their success.
Cost
Staying within your budget is key to running a business, however, you should always weigh the cost/benefit of saving money in one place if it could negatively impact you in another.
- Cin7 has the lowest starting price, but it isn’t radically distant from the cost of Unleashed.
- Unleashed offers mid-level prices that can go higher or lower depending on the features you need.
- SEQOS has a varying range of plans that are determined by the size and complexity of your business and your customisation needs. If you need more advanced solutions, you could pay more than with the other two, but this extra cost will be reflected in better service.
Winner: Hard to tell and your mileage will vary. While Cin7 offers a lower starter price, whether the savings are justified will depend on your specific requirements. All of them offer different prices for different clients to account for the size and needs of each company, so cost is closely tied to each client.
Cin7 vs Unleashed vs SEQOS: Which one should I choose?
Both Cin7 and Unleash offer solid cloud-based solutions to help you manage your businesses’ inventory needs.
Unleashed is a cloud-based software that provides product businesses with transparency and authority over suppliers, production, inventory, and sales processes. Cin7 also provides cloud-based inventory management software accessible from any location and any computer, with regular updates to ensure that the software remains aligned with contemporary industry practices.
The advantages of a cloud-based system include the ease of data access and collaboration, the flexibility of using it from a variety of devices and locations, the relatively lower cost, the simplicity of backups, as well as integrations and analytics.
The downsides include everything that can go wrong when you must rely on a stable network, such as downtimes and poor support. This is an important sticking point for most business owners as inexpert onboarding, outages, and slow or deficient support can turn a small issue into a big ordeal that can lose you customers. (Learn more about how to choose between cloud-based and on-premise management systems).
SEQOS offers both options: cloud-based and on-premise. This means you have extra flexibility, and also the option to more easily migrate between one system to the other when your needs shift, helping with scalability. They also prioritise personalised support, so you’re not stuck with someone unreliable or reading off a script, instead of trying to actually meet your business needs.
Which platform is right for you will depend on your specific needs and budget. If you are a small business with a limited budget, Cin7 or Unleashed may be a good option for you. If you are a larger business with more complex needs, SEQOS will certainly be a better fit.
Overall, with their all-in-one solution, their more robust set of features, the added flexibility of cloud and on-premise options, plus the ability to serve companies even in highly complex industries, SEQOS is the clear winner in this comparison.
If you’re still unsure about what system is a better fit for your business between Cin7 vs Unleashed vs SEQOS and cloud-based or in-premise, contact us and book a free demo. We’re sure that SEQOS can help you easily scale and save you headaches in the process.
