Inventory management and visibility solutions are getting smarter thanks to AI, and Katana is taking advantage of that technology to improve the capabilities of manufacturers.
Katana, the operating system for multi-channel commerce, which is used by more than 1,500 companies across 70 countries, announced this week a strategic upgrade to its platform. The company is taking it from one that records what happened with inventory to a platform that “anticipates what comes next.”
“Growing brands and manufacturers have long relied on Katana for real-time inventory visibility across every sales channel,” the company said in a statement. “What changes now is what that foundation can do. It delivers forward-looking intelligence, adapting to how each business operates and connecting to the tools teams already use, without requiring a separate system or custom development.”
The impetus behind the upgrade is based on the expansion of new AI tools that are accurate and provide real-time visibility, “where a product that reads as unavailable is one the shopper never sees.” Katana is also addressing pain points in e-commerce such as stockouts, which can cost retailers and brands between $21,000 and $268,000 a year, according to the company’s own research.
Katana is addressing these issues with new capabilities such as “Katana MCP,” which is a native AI integration tool that connects inventory operations to AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and more. The company said Katana MCP is one of the first vendor-supported AI integrations in inventory management. MCP works in simple language and gets answers that used to mean an export and a spreadsheet. It can also create and update sales, manufacturing and purchase orders just by asking. And Katana MCP can be used alongside other tools such as Shopify or QuickBooks.
It also features “custom fields,” which is an adaptive data architecture that allows businesses to define their own records across every module. Other features include “Assisted Import,” which eliminates onboarding friction by automatically mapping any spreadsheet to the platform, and “AI Replenishment,” which Katana describes as an intelligent demand forecasting and procurement tool.
Ben Hussey, co-chief executive officer of Katana, said the platform “has always told you what’s in stock. What changes now is what that foundation can do. We’re opening a new chapter in how inventory software can work for the people who depend on it, so they can spend less time managing their software and more time growing their business.”
By way of a case study, Spencer Tetrault, founder of Axe & Awl Leatherworks, said his team can take a screenshot of a supplier’s invoice, uploaded into the AI chat. It then “produces an accurate PO in Katana, replacing our Make and Google Sheet workflow. This will save our team countless hours across many scenarios.”
Katana describes the upgrade as a new chapter for the platform that “also introduces a new kind of engagement for manufacturers and brands whose operations require more than standard software can deliver.”
