As your business grows, its operations become more complex, throwing up new challenges you must meet. When you’re working on a small scale, inventory management is something you don’t have to worry about too much, as you have relatively few orders, so there’s less to take care of. However, as your business expands, inventory management can become a much bigger issue and one that’s important to get right if you’re going to continue your growth. When your inventory management goes wrong, it often results in problems for your customers and can have negative consequences for your brand.
If you can get on top of your inventory management, though, there are plenty of benefits to be had.
Error-Free Order Fulfillment
You can’t fulfill orders if you haven’t got the right stock. When your inventory management isn’t functioning properly, you risk being unable to fulfill orders and even risk the wrong products being sent out. Not only does this cost your business money, but it infuriates customers. They expect you to be able to do the simple things right, and sending out the right products is one of them.
Order fulfillment can be very complicated when you’re working with many different sales channels and multiple warehouses, but you’ve got to have the right systems in place to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Streamlined Inventory Planning
Even the biggest companies can get into difficulties with inventory planning. It’s a delicate balance; on the one hand, you need enough stock to service all your orders, but on the other hand, you don’t want excess stock lying around and tying up all your capital.
The market can be difficult to predict, which makes inventory planning tricky, but you’ve got to be paying attention to things like a reorder point . A reorder point takes into account your supply chains and establishes a minimum number of a certain unit, at which point you have to order more. The reorder point should leave you with enough units to service your orders before the new stock comes without leaving you exposed to the prospect of having excess stock.
Increased Efficiency
Inventory management can take up so many man-hours if it is not working correctly. At its heart, it’s a simple process, but we all know it can be very complex. There are many different moving parts that need to come together, and there is a lot of potential for human error.
Modern technology allows you to take some of these complexities out of inventory management by automating some of the important processes. The more you can streamline the major operations, the more effective your inventory management is going to be.
Improved Customer Service
Getting on top of your inventory management is only going to make your customer service better. When you take out the inefficiencies, you’re going to be able to get the right products to your customers more quickly, and better meet their expectations. People expect fast delivery in 2020, and you’re much more likely to be able to give it to them if you’re doing your inventory management well.
