Inventory software
Inventory management has become a crucial practice for every industry. Regardless of the type, every business needs adequate inventory control to ensure growth. Furthermore, inventory management impacts a company’s finances. Irrespective of the size of the warehouse, proper inventory handling can give better transparency concerning your company’s revenue potential.
Utilizing inventory management software for managing inventory has been the first step towards automating the whole management process. It helps businesses to make more informed marketing decisions and adjust to the demands by demand forecasting. By keeping track of the present stock and trends, this software can furnish you with detailed reports regarding the purchasing patterns, customer demands, and seasonal trends.
Using these reports, you can decide which products and what numbers you should add to your inventory. Many of these differing management software packages will use real-time data processing software that you can see from the likes of ververica.com for instance. The ability to have data processed and analyzed using stream-processing software ensures that the management software packages can keep track of large and quick changes within data, i.e stock of inventory, customer data or payment data.
Let’s take a look at how industries are employing inventory management in their businesses.
#1 Inventory management for Food Industry
Managing the inventory of the food industry is quite different when compared to other sectors. This is because the catalog of the food industry more often consists of items that are degradable and can get spoiled in a span of a few days; therefore, the usual inventory management techniques do not work for this industry. Condition of overstocking can also lead to loss of money as certain food items are perishable and do not last long; therefore, improper handling can result in wastage.
One of the best practices for food inventory management is to use inventory management software. This software can track batch and expiry dates of fresh foods and those foods which have a short shelf life and thereby prevent the conditions of overstocking by maintaining an optimum level of inventory. Moreover, inventory management software can optimize your inventory by forecasting future demands using records about the products sold. It can satisfy the customers by maintaining fresh products on the shelves so that they always have access to the right, fresh, and quality food. Besides, inventory management software can optimize the supply chain by gathering real-time data about the location of products, thereby enhancing the chain’s visibility.
#2 Inventory management in Ecommerce industry
When talking about inventory in ecommerce, it usually consists of finished goods. Ecommerce inventory management allows businesses to keep track of inventory conditions such as overstocked, understocked, in-stock, or stockout. Inventory management software eases and optimizes multiple tasks for ecommerce businesses.
When your business is more prominent and global, it is no science that you’ll require multiple warehouses, mainly if it includes cross-border shipments. Inventory management software mostly will keep an eye on all these warehouses, keep track of each product, and notify you when products are understocked or low in stock. Therefore the visibility into the multiple warehouses improves drastically no matter on which continent it sits.
Inventory management software ensures that every customer’s demand is fulfilled by always keeping a real-time count of inventory present so that the items shown in-stock on the website are readily available to the customers. The software has also proven effective in eliminating deadstock and demand forecasting. It also gives you an insight into your stock conditions, therefore allowing you to make decisions while reordering the products. If you’re running low on budget, you can take the help of free and open-source inventory management software.
#3 Inventory management in Furniture Industry
The furniture industry is evolving and spreading across nations via online stores. For example, IKEA, a furniture giant that originated from Sweden, offers products over physical stores and online platforms throughout the world. But going global is not easy; it brings with it complexities and more pressure on managing the correct inventory. As a business grows and goes global, types of products and the number of customers and locations increase tenfold. Therefore the stocks rise along getting more complex to manage.
When it comes to storing furniture, it requires a vast space compared to other items, which means warehouses need to be larger. Also, in this industry, taste, and trends keep changing which also means you need to keep check of your existing inventory whether it fits the current trends. To avoid deadstock and thus unnecessary consumption of space, the accurate demand forecasting is the right thing for furniture companies.
Inventory management software can help the furniture industry to a great length in solving these challenges by streamlining the inventory management processes. You have to update your stock details in the software, and, in return, it will keep you furnished with real-time information about the sales, profits, and in-hand stock without any manual intervention. Due to the real-time stock tracking feature, it will notify you when your inventory falls below the optimum level. With all the data stored in the software, you can generate the report and use it to forecast the demand and sales. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about sending confirmation emails to your customers buying the product from your company as the software will do it for you.
#4 Inventory management in Fashion Industry
Compared to the furniture industry, the fashion industry is slightly more affected by changing tastes, trends, and seasonality. No one likes to wear outdated clothes except a maverick. So managing the fashion retail inventory based on these fluctuating demands is not a piece of cake. But the good thing is, here too, implementing inventory management software can simplify the job.
Inventory management systems can keep track of the trends based on the history of sales and present trends, thereby comparing it with the current stock in the inventory it can notify or generate the report predicting what trends and type of products need to be restocked in advance before the actual demand arises. For example, if it’s the time of monsoon, your inventory should be prepared with adequate amounts of rain boots, raincoats of various sizes and colors to keep up with the customer demand.
Moreover, by inventory kitting, you can sell some of the things occupying space in your warehouse by bundling it with the in-demand product. This will ensure that your cash inflow isn’t tied up with the deadstock and also it helps you generate more revenue by selling them at attractive rates.
Summing up
Inventory management is the best aid for the industries wishing to stand out in this competitive market. Moreover, automation in inventory management can save time, reduce costs by eliminating inventory shrinkages and deadstock, and speed up your management processes. Employing inventory management software is a best practice for companies willing to automate their management processes.
Author Bio- Hi There, I am Shaun Williams, a content writer with Goodfirms, a research platform for Cloud Computing, Ecommerce companies, Translation services companies, among many others. I enjoy communicating ideas and knowledge creatively and also ensure that the readers never suffer from boredom while reading my posts.
