TrueDemand Software Inc. is building a set of applications for the retail and manufacturing sectors to work with supply chains that use radio-frequency identification, with the goal of helping companies reduce out-of-stock and excess inventory. The startup recently secured $6 million in round A funding from Mayfield Venture Capital and Bay Partners.
The suite of three applications, scheduled for release in September, will combine electronic-product-code data with transactional data to predict supply-and-demand needs. It will offer more than what companies get from reporting applications, says Eric Peters, a founder and CEO at TrueDemand. "Analysis and reporting applications tell me I had out-of-stocks," Peters says. "Big deal. Prevent the out-of-stock, that's what I need to do."
TrueDemand is working with a handful of undisclosed consumer-goods companies in a joint development project to test the applications, Peters says. The company has 17 employees, and applications are being written on IBM WebSphere in Java 2 Enterprise Edition.