Narvar Inc.
Maniacal Builders of Cloud based Supply Chain Platform

The supply chain frontier is more often than not typecast as an underdog in the business environment, overshadowed by infrastructure and IT related investments. However, Amit Sharma, Founder and CEO of Narvar, begs to differ. According to him, supply chain today stands out as a sector that drives immense customer experience and retail sales, taking shape as the top priority for CIOs. "Companies like Amazon are leading the path, not only in IT efficiency but also in customer experience—owing to their supply chain expertise," comments Sharma.

In the past, the supply chain was a vertical where companies had to purchase big ERP solutions, with long implementation cycles. The other option was individual solutions for areas like freight and warehouse management or logistics, cobbled together to form a system. Today organizations are looking for immediate solutions, and counting on a Software as a Service (SaaS) based environment. This is where Narvar comes in. "There are two components that companies often ignore when developing supply chain strategies— customer experience and consumer choice. The Narvar platform addresses both of these gaps in an elegant manner, which is why so many retailers have opted to use our platform," informs Sharma. Narvar is currently working with over 50 key retailers including One Kings Lane, Bonobos, Skechers and Forever21.

Narvar believes in creating an omni channel environment which is powered not only through the back-end but also through a customer focused front-end. "The biggest and best retailers understand that commerce and brand loyalty will primarily be driven by the post-purchase experience. Amazon has clearly proven this. Narvar enables all retailers to offer a delightful shipping experience and is innovating at a rapid pace," explains Sharma.

According to Sharma, customers also like to shop with retailers that can provide them with products at their location of preference—either in-store or-at-home. Narvar's core goal is to enable customer experience and accuracy, and the company’s supply chain platform is hosted on Amazon Web Service infrastructure.

“This allows us to scale quickly, giving us a high availability environment, where we can load balance our servers across multiple regions,” states Sharma.

Retail clients benefit from Narvar’s solutions and services in three broad areas—overall customer satisfaction, operational expense reduction and incremental retail sales. In one specific case, a retailer was facing trouble in terms of visibility in shipment status. Narvar's supply chain management tools helped receive this information more accurately. Narvar also reduced the retailer’s customer service cost by 15 to 20 percent.

Prior to founding Narvar, Sharma managed multi-channel supply chains for Walmart and Apple, both from an operations and innovation perspective. Sharma credits this expertise in supply chain to his 15 years of work experience, which sets Narvar apart from other start-ups.

“I engage in distance running and for me supply chain is also like distance running—it’s not a sprint that you can build quickly, but it requires years of experience,” quips Sharma. The company also tags themselves as ‘maniacal builders of platform’, enabling plug and play implementations. The platform can be up in running in a few days, and doesn't force a client to go through major system changes.

Supply chain is like distance running—it’s not a sprint and cannot be built quickly

Although Narvar is a technology company, they stand out from the pack because of their focus on business nuances and logic for solving complex supply chain issues. Going forward, Narvar is looking forward to helping retailers with, returns and reverse logistics experiences.