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Why Inventory Management So Important

Holding inventory ties up a lot of cash. That’s why good inventory management is crucial for growing a company. Just like cash flow, it can make or break your business.

Inventory Management Saves You Money

Good inventory management saves you money in a few critical ways:

Avoid Spoilage

If you’re selling a product that has an expiry date (like food or makeup), there’s a very real chance it will go bad if you don’t sell it in time. Solid inventory management helps you avoid unnecessary spoilage.

Avoid Dead Stock

Dead stock is stock that can no longer be sold, but not necessarily because it expired. It could have gone out of season, out of style, or otherwise become irrelevant. By managing your inventory better, you can avoid dead stock.

Save on Storage Costs

Warehousing is often a variable cost, meaning it fluctuates based on how much product you’re storing. When you store too much product at once or end up with a product that’s difficult to sell, your storage costs will go up. Avoiding this will save you money.

A lot of inventory errors can happen at receiving if your inventory management personnel don’t have enough space to work. Avoid giving them a small office at the end of the room. Eliminating receiving errors will relieve you from all kinds of ugly issues later in the selling cycle, like losing time, money, and credibility.

Stock management devices such as bar-code scanners and stock management software can help drastically improve your efficiency and productivity. These tools will help eliminate manual processes so your employees can focus on other, more important areas of the business.

By effectively managing your inventory, you can ensure that you have the right products in the right quantity and avoid products being sold out or funds being tied up in excess stock. Be sure that your perishable products are sold in time to avoid spoilage and prevent your business spending too much money on stock that’s taking up space in a warehouse or stockroom. So how do you avoid the traps of having too much or too little inventory? With inventory management software, of course.

Good inventory management software should:

Reduce costs, improve cash flow and boost your business’s bottom line
Track your inventory in real time
Help you forecast demand
Prevent product and production shortages
Prevent excess stock and too many raw materials
Allow for easy inventory analysis on any device
Be accessible right from your retail point-of-sale (POS) system
Optimise warehouse organisation and precious employee time
Offer quick and painless bar code scanning to speed up intake
Allow for multi location management, tracking inventory across several locations or warehouses

Inventory management is the part of supply chain management that aims to always have the right products in the right quantity for sale, at the right time. In doing this effectively, businesses reduce the costs of carrying excess inventory while maximizing sales. Good inventory management can help you track your inventory in real time to streamline this process.

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Streamline Order Management in eCommerce

The purpose of order management is to ensure that the administration of processes within related to goods and/or services run smoothly. Implementation of order management systems helps to streamline the ordering process and to ensure that inventory information, vendor databases, customer databases, information on billing and payments, records of order processing and general order information is always updated and retrievable. A well implemented order management system improves the relationships businesses have with their customers, improves order efficiency and prevents delays and back orders of products.

While a clear project structure is essential, it’s also important to consider B2B best practices and design principles that are meaningful to your customers – always put your customer first. Create an experience that focuses on your customer and their job. While there are complex decisions that you and your team will make, always put yourself in the shoes of your customer.

B2B Order management gets more complex the more channels you add. You’ll need a system that can give you a holistic view of all your orders, in different stages of the supply chain.If a merchant is only selling products through one channel, like an online store, an eCommerce platform can typically keep track of inventory. But when more than one sales channel is used, inventory management can become difficult.

If a merchant is only selling products through one channel, like an online store, an ecommerce platform can typically keep track of inventory. But when more than one sales channel is used, inventory management can become difficult.

Order management systems are very critical to order fulfillment and in effect how effectively a business will perform within its ecommerce component. A business cannot grow efficiently if that particular business cannot adequately fulfill its orders. Therefore, it is often recommended to have multichannel order management systems that allow for significant optimization in inventory and notable sales each and every day.

Order management systems have specific software that provides details and data necessary to ensure that all eCommerce orders are managed properly. All order management systems have powerful features that include shopping cart integration, PCI compliance as well as fraud protection.

Most products that online retailers sell are sourced from distributes, drop shippers, or directly from the manufacturer itself. In each of those situations, establishing a good working relationship with them is essential. Having a healthy rapport and good reputation with your suppliers will benefit you when something goes wrong. Also, just as important is how you relate to them technologically. Integration between your ordering system and theirs is key to providing your customers with excellent service and fast delivery.

Complexity is not new. Manufacturers and Distributors typically already had all of that complexity before e-commerce. B2B enterprises have elaborate ERP systems that route, fulfill and handle return orders for existing channels. E-Commerce is just a new order capture channel. This is why I spend so much time articulating the differences between B2B and B2C. The challenges can be radically different. For a change, order management is an issue that is less complicated.

The benefits of Streamlining eCommerce order management system are significant. A Centralized order management offers greater efficiency in managing orders across the enterprise.With the help of an order management software, retailers can ensure faster and more efficient responsiveness to customer demands and marketplace changes.

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Why eCommerce Order Management System So Important

The growth of online retail is one of the most significant effects of the Internet on the modern business environment. Freed from the shackles of overhead costs that accompany brick-and-mortar stores, retail entrepreneurs can launch online stores and grow their operations with lower upfront investments.

Yet even in an online retail environment, scaling up can be a challenge for businesses whose original processes for managing and fulfilling orders can’t handle an increase in volume. In these situations, online retailers typically invest in various e-commerce solutions.

A structured design process will provide clear direction to the eCommerce team. Everyone will know their roles and will feel that their input is considered at the appropriate time. While there is always a need to adapt and be flexible throughout the design journey, adhering to an overall structure will provide direction for all involved and can reduce the general length of the project.

Ecommerce order management process is the heart of any online retail business which contributes towards achieving 100% customer satisfaction. So, an order management system is the “hub” where data from each critical aspect of the business—the online storefront, the shopping cart, the inventory system and the payment- and shipment-processing platforms—flows in and out of. The order management system is aided by integrations with services and functions in each of those critical areas.

It is difficult to find what you are looking for on the B2B site when you don’t know exactly what you need. The clean search, navigation and taxonomy enables a customer to find technical and complex products quickly and be assured they found exactly the right product.

If you integrate your shipping services into your sales workflow, you’ll save time and energy generating shipping labels and choosing carriers. Most order management systems easily integrate with well known shipping partners like FedEx, USPS, UPS and several others. Be it your online store, your catalog or your warehouse, order management systems match the right inventory with accurate numbers and details of the product to your customer.

Your order management system should also track shipments and separate a unique tracking number for customers, enabling both you and the customers to track the order throughout the fulfillment process. This service also simultaneously updates the shipping information on all channels.

The ultimate goal of any business is to get customers to buy your product. However, if your back-end is not efficient, or your inventory isn’t integrated with order management system, you are likely to miss out on potential clients.