What makes a business make a good run for its money is when it can keep a good track of the ins and outs of its stocks from raw materials to the finished product. Being able to monitor your product movement will then eventually enable you to predict or project the sales level that you can target and make sure that there will be minimal short-landed orders to customers.
One way to keep a good track of the movement of your goods is through the integration of inventory management software. To give you a brief background, the inventory management system keeps track of your goods in the entire supply chain or a portion of where it operated in a particular business. The inventory management software covers everything from the production of goods to the delivery to retail store, from warehousing to shipment and all other movements of the stocks and parts in between.
For all of its intents and purposes, this means that a business can now be able to see all the smallest possible moving parts of its operations, thus allowing the business owners to make better decisions and possible investments. An inventory manager’s focus differs from the various parts of the supply chain – although those small businesses might just be interested in the purchasing and selling end of the supply chain.
Effectively managing a business establishment’s inventory has always been one of the biggest challenges that need to be hurdled when you are running an online business. The challenge even amplifies as the business continues to grow. Thus, to be able to sell on more channels and provide for the continuous growth of your business, the integration of an inventory management software to your firm becomes an essential requirement. Here are some of the key advantages that the automated inventory management system software can contribute.
In the event that you decide to place an inventory management software to your business, here are some of the key advantages that the automated inventory management system can contribute:
- It can provide you with a simplified inventory management
One of the biggest advantages when you start to integrate an inventory management software to your business is that it can make the process of managing your stock a whole lot easier. If you were to look online at how to introduce a barcode scanning system – you would see enhanced benefit of this also. Using a barcode scanning system as part of your inventory management process will enable precise tracking and monitoring on a per barcode basis. Systems can then work together to generate alerts for low stock levels, expiration dates or overstocking – this allows for timely replenishment and reducing risk of stockouts or excess of inventory stored, which will eventually increase both warehouse efficiency and profits.
- More chance of increasing your company’s profitability
With the automation of your key business operation, you will then be able to become more efficient and accurate in terms of fulfilling your tasks like the effective management of your stock levels, a timely updating of your listings across all business centers and efficient processing of orders. This will contribute to the reduction of costs when you are effectively managing and cutting off costs, increase profitability will always follow.
- Ability to increase productivity and increase efficiency
By way of streamlining and automation of your day-to-day manual things to do that are essential in the continuous running of your business, the integration of the inventory management will enable you to save more hours, thus giving you an increase in productivity and work efficiency. This will then give you that chance to focus more on maximizing the growth of your company. The inventory management system will also vest you the ability to manage your stocks, the processing, and dispatching of orders, and then print shipping labels up to the updated of the listing of your inventory items.
- Ability to minimize errors
Because you are already automating your business transactions, you will be more assured that the stocks that go out of your warehouse are consistent with what your record purports. This will give you the chance to reduce if not eliminate the chance of overselling your stocks.
- You can now avoid stock-outs and overstocking
Trying to maintain the right stock level is a very challenging task when you are managing your inventory. This is because if you use a very low buffer level, chances are you might end up with a stock-out which will not give a good impression to your customers and eventually lead you to a potential loss of sales. On one hand, you might be considering to give a high buffer level because you thought that demand might be high, but then you end up having excess inventories in your warehouse which will eat up a lot of space and will make you incur unnecessary costs. One way to solve this issue is using demand forecasting software as part of your inventory management system, this will anticipate demand levels based on existing sales data and aim to advise you on forecasts for the future so you can set buffers at the correct levels for restock rather than being short or having an excess of stock.
Thankfully, with the help of an inventory management system, tracking low levels and setting up automatic re-ordering points for each product line will be probable which will help you to avoid the occurrence of stock-outs. Conversely, you can also set re-order point and replenishment thresholds so to forecast product demand and minimizing the risk of an excessive stocking.
- It can provide you with an all-in-one solution
There are inventory management systems that include the management of your shipments, the listing management, and the order management function. This will enable you to streamline the entire sales process starting from the listing of the products to the fulfilling of your customer’s orders, up through invoice printing and the actual shipment of the orders.
Each company has different needs, this depends on the magnitude of the coverage and how much capital expenditure they are willing to invest in such software. There is more sophisticated inventory management software which of course will require a hefty amount, and there are those which do not offer much but can also provide you with your basic needs.