There are many third party tools available to Suppliers and Warehouses to analyze and grow sales. Many of these tools depend on access to the supplier's inventory data. In some instances these third party solutions require access to the supplier's inventory database. In other situations, part and availability information must be synchronized to the third party software's database or files.

In either situation, many organizations choose to keep data used for analysis or electronic distribution separate but synchronized to their production data. This insures no integrity or performance impact on production data required for the warehouse management system or ERP to function.