The article talks about how inventory control features like barcode scanning, real-time updates, asset management, and actionable reports can help retail businesses lower overheads and improve efficiency. It’s written specifically with retailers in mind, as they deal with things like quick expiration, high volume, and complex procurement patterns, which makes it a challenging space for inventory and retail management.
What is inventory control software?
Inventory happens to be one of the biggest expenses for most organizations. This is the prime reason that companies make efforts to remain proactive about in inventory control activities. We are far from the handwritten inventory process today. Today the inventory systems can do so many things like tracking, analytics, multi-site and multi-stage management.
The use of inventory control software is becoming considerably important in retail business along with service delivery, wholesale and other industries. And why not? After all, it helps companies keep track of its assets and accordingly distribute it to its customers. To be more accurate, inventory control software is an umbrella term for all the tools needed to eliminate costly mistakes and theft, prevent products from spoiling, and most importantly, keep the customers happy and satisfied.
What’s in it for retail businesses?
This inventory automation technology makes complex tasks so much possible for businesses compared to using those time-consuming spreadsheets. It lets businesses prepare for sudden sales drop or spikes by monitoring trends – makes it easy for them to plan ahead and make strategic decisions based on the past records. When you keep your stocks organized and categorized, you automatically increase efficiency and effectiveness on the whole. You will be able to retrieve stats whenever you require. No matter how much stock or product variety you have, a robust inventory management software is a smart addition to your infrastructure. Undoubtedly, it is also a surefire way to satisfy your customers and employees.
Inventory optimization and retail businesses
There are various inventory control systems in the market out there but they all do the same thing – inventory optimization. It can be easily defined as a software that ‘maintains the right amount of the right items stocked in the right locations within supply network’. Balancing the need to minimize stock warehousing costs against the need for product availability is referred as the optimization.
Wondering where retail and small business inventory control software would fit in? Most of the time, it is on the front-end in the sales capacity. Businesses look out for solutions that enable them to take care of their stocks in one location while automating replacements and making order requests when needed. Efficiency is the key which is why it also of considerable importance to eliminate obsolete, defective and unwanted items from the stock and take it back to the vendor. If retail stores are working via one or two locations, they’ll need to integrate POS (Point of Sale) system with inventory control software to increase efficiency.
Inventory Control Software Features for Your Retail Business
1. Inventory and asset management
Don’t all retailers want their most popular products to be always in stock? If you want to retain customers, you need to know your stock patterns well. Did you know 83% of consumers stop shopping at a store that is out of stock of their desired item?
Owing to the inventory control software, retailers are able to manage their purchases and sales in the very same system, control stock levels, and track assets. Not only that. They can even replenish items and create purchase orders for them. You can easily create stock orders either by using CSV uploads or by scanning product barcodes. This software lets you email purchase orders directly to the suppliers which can then be received and modified when you receive the order.
Another thing this software does is generate stock orders whenever a product goes below your preset levels. This way you will never have to worry that you either are understocked or overstocked. It also lets you record and return stock which is faulty, unsold, or damaged back to the supplier.
2. Seamless product management
Easy management of products is something every retail business values. With inventory control solution, you can organize product by categorizing them. They can become easily searchable when you organize them by price, date, popularity, name, supplier code, tag, handle, brand and many other similar filters.
This will let you perform inventory counts, coordinate with your retail store collection and build custom reports. This feature will give you complete stock control as it lets you predict accurate demand and accordingly make stock requests from vendors.
Another useful feature of this software is that it lets you manage your products seamlessly via barcode scanning. It fulfills the needs of large companies and global retailers by allowing you to easily exchange electronic data. It also lets you help retain full inventory control and track asset data.
You can even manage a single central product catalog and simply sync it with your products throughout your channels. This helps to eliminate human errors by canceling out the need for double data entry.
3. Real-time product updates and insights
For your retail business to work efficiently, it is simply not enough to just know which of your products sell most. You need to know your products inside out if you want to get the most out of your retail business. You should know how much you should keep in stock, when you should stock more and who is most likely to use them.
The inventory software treats data as a dynamic variable and lets you hold the reign of your products or services that you are selling. The bottom line is that it will provide you with less time-consuming and simplified methods to process all the sales information and also let your team members remain updated about it.
If the asset management software is cloud-based, it will give you information in real-time and the analytical tools that will provide you with all that you need to know about your business. These tools give you an eagle’s eye view of your inventory helping you make better and faster decisions. There can be huge costs for having excess inventory. Proper reporting can highlight places where you can reduce cost and improve marketing.
4. Access your inventory data from anywhere, anytime
Don’t you just wish you could access your inventory data from anywhere and at any time? You can do that with cloud-based inventory control software. You just need an internet connection. Mobile access to your inventory is of considerable importance as you will be able to check stock levels, reorder products and receive notifications on the go.
When your retail business grows and you open up new stores, you will face new inventory management challenges. You’ll have to keep a check on the inventory stock in all your stores as well as online storefronts. Fortunately, by using this software managing inventory of multiple stores is like managing inventory of one.
Bottom line
Smart inventory management is not just about keeping track of your products. How much to order, how much to sell and when to order stock can seem like a guesswork! You can get rid of this trial and error with inventory control software and get to practice more control over your business.
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Contributed byhttps://www.ezofficeinventory.com
