In the last 12 months, 81% of the global shoppers have faced an out of stock situation while globally, retailers have recorded losses of over $1.75 trillion because of mismanaged inventory.
Inventory management and supply chain problems are global and are faced by businesses of all scale and sizes. If you are one of these companies that are still using excel sheets to manage the inventory or ones which are not managing it at all, it’s time to change that.
In this article, we are going to talk about the benefits of inventory management software for business, highlighting how it solves the issues pertaining to mismanaged inventories.
The limitations of inventory management
The list of advantages of inventory management is very huge. It helps with the optimization of stocks, saves costs, and makes supply chain efficient, etc. But the other list which is equally long is of the challenges or limitations of inventory management.
While there are a number of issues in the inventory management process –
Let us address the key problems which are present on a global scale.
Inconsistent tracking
Using the manual inventory tracking processes across spreadsheets can be redundant, prone to errors, and time-consuming. Even the small businesses can use a centralized inventory management software for ecommerce that would include accounting, tracking features.
Incomplete data
At any given point in the day, you should have transparency around what amount of inventory you have. To enable this, it is important that you get a complete set of data from multiple sources on an “as it happens” basis.
Changing demand
Customer demands operate in an ever-changing mode. So while keeping a lot of stocks can lead to obsolete inventory, having too little can prevent you from fulfilling customer orders.
What helps is having an order strategy wherein you are able to predict and fulfill demands.
Supply chain complexity
Global supply chains move on an everyday basis, which places a burden on the inventory management tasks. In order to address the usual mode of operation where the wholesale distributors and manufacturers dictate the when, where and how, your inventory management process should be flexible and come with unanticipated lead time.
Insufficient order management
One of the most common issues of robust inventory management is two-fold: overselling of a product and running out of the inventory. While making use of the seasonal and historical data can help predict the orders, it requires a software-based approach to inventory management in logistics.
These pestering issues find a solution in inventory management software for businesses.
What is inventory management software?
Inventory management software is a platform which automates certain aspects of warehouse management and inventory. They streamline the tasks which are needed to track inventory, manage the rendering process, and update the accounting data.
Fundamentally, the benefits of inventory management software lies in giving you real-time updates on what is happening with your stocks.
With the basics now addressed, let us look at what is leading to the growing popularity of inventory management software.
