According to the 2017 e-commerce fulfillment report, 1 out of every 3 businesses miss their shipping due date because of selling those products, that are actually unavailable in stock. Because of this, many of these businesses lose their precious customers. Today, we are going to discuss how to not be on the wrong side of these stats and have your business ready to tackle a similar situation. So, in short, we are here to discuss Inventory Management for New Businesses.
Inventory Management
Stock is an essential part of any business, be it a product-based or service-based. And as much as the products is important, its management is even more crucial in having a successful business run. Items management is a process by which a business can keep track of all the products in its supply chain so that the business is never deprived of a particular product.
Managing your inventory can make a big difference in your sales. It helps in establishing a trust factor with your customers. And manual management is really difficult to perform because then you have to manage each and every item regularly each and every day. Because of this, there are multiple pos systems present in the market that uses their advanced algorithms to not only find the missing products from your store. But also they help your forecast your inventory based on past data and analytics.
First Step Towards Managing Your Inventory
Your management starts from the day you order your first set of products for your business. From there you can start keeping count of all your sales and purchases to keep yourself up to date with the demand and supply ratio. There are certain steps that you have to take to manage your stocks more efficiently. Some of them are listed below:
- First and foremost, you should get a POS system with in-built inventory management features.
- Enter all the available count you currently have at your disposal
- Enter details of your previous sales and purchases
- Forecast your future sales through past sales records
- Finally, start updating the inventory in case of any discrepancies.
The Need for Inventory Management
Every business needs inventory management to keep a record of all their sales and purchases. Having an item management software with you solves all the inconsistencies in your warehouse and orders. There are various advantages that you can get from managing your storage the right way, such as:
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Forecasting Sales and Purchases
Having a good inventory management software helps you in forecasting your sales and purchases with almost near accuracy. This feature helps your business get a good number of supplies for high demand products. Also, the forecast helps you cut your unnecessary cost by telling you which of your products are getting expired due to a lack of demand.
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Time-Saving
It saves a lot of yours as well as your staff’s precious time. Managing your stocks manually is a very tedious task to perform, and you have to do it on a regular basis to keep the exact track of your product count. All these things take a large portion of your or your employee’s time but with the help of a good inventory manager, you can easily eliminate all that hard work and time wastage and use those precious hours on more useful or productive work.
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Accuracy
Accuracy is a big part of any business’s success as it defines how efficiently are you able to manage your products, sales, and purchases within your organization. This feature is remarkably important in your business serves both offline as well as ass online customers. Then you have the need to be accurate with your inventories and orders, so no orders get delayed due to a lack of products.
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Improve Cash Flow
The cash flow of an organization highly depends on how well they are managing they are supplies and demands. And all these things are part of inventory management itself. It helps to correctly organize the products by increasing transparency and using algorithms like First-in First-out. By using these measures, one can increase the cash flow of the organization and help maintain a neat and clean record of their transaction.
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Maintain Optimal Inventory Levels
By using good software to maintain your product count, you can always ensure that your warehouse has the right quantity of every item in it. The storage must nor be overfilled, neither be underfilled with any of the products. Your managing system must also keep an account for expiring items so that it can clean out your storage of any non-usable item and try to control its quantity on the basis of its demand.
Things to remember for small or new businesses
There are certain things that a new business owner should keep in mind while choosing an inventory management software. These things can make a big difference while growing your business up to competitive levels.
Some of these things are:
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Product Cost
It is one of the factors that you should definitely consider while choosing a POS system or inventory management software for your business. Having an overpriced software can harm you in multiple ways. One, it will drain you money resources and secondly, it will provide you with unnecessary features that could potentially confuse your employees. So, keep a close eye on the cost of any system you are looking to buy.
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Ease of Access and Usability
Having an understandable and easy to use interface is a must-have feature in any software you want to have. It should be easy to navigate as well as accessible to any type of employee. Having regional language support is even better. You should also consider how easy is the UI and UX are on the system so that you can have better control over all the features.
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The credibility of Service Provider
Having a credible service provider for your inventory manager is a lot better than choosing any cost-efficient non-credible one. This is because of the quality of service they provide. Your business, when managed by a company’s system, becomes a part of their ecosystem as well. So choosing a good provider will help you have better security, better services, and better support overall.
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Integration to other modules
Your chosen system must also be open to other integrations as well so that you can use third-party modules such as barcode reader or QR scanner with the same. If your system is incompatible with other systems in the market, then it will only bound you to choose from their ecosystem only, which limits a business’s right to choose. Check this before buying the POS system you want.
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Support and Services
As much as you need a good inventory management system in your store, you also need to have better support for that system as well. You don’t want to be a client of a company that won’t help you at the time of need. At the time of a product failure, the company should take full responsibility and provide you all the necessary support as per the situation demands.
Conclusion
So, this was a brief introduction to inventory management for beginners and new businesses. If you are looking to buy new products organization software at the latest, then you should read the article first and then check out which is the best warehouse management system out there. You can always choose a POS system with built-in inventory management so that you can save the cost of buying the other one separate. Now, get up and help your business reach sky-high as fast as possible.
