With inventory management, accuracy is key
Post 4 of ‘How to Best Sell Your Inventory to Off-Price Retailers’
Finding the right markets and buyers and personalizing offerings to those buyers, including ideal visual and descriptive information, will undoubtedly optimize profits.
Equally important, however, is real-time knowledge of exactly what is in inventory and available for sale.
Why is inventory management important?
Products are being purchased, shipped, and returned across all channels—in-store, online, and through mobile applications, shipped from both stores and warehouses – in every combination possible, as consumers are forming higher expectations and demands from their retailers.
These omni-channel efforts complicate inventory tracking, as products can be moved to multiple locations during their selling lifecycle due to haphazard returns, cancelled orders, and shipping changes brought on by new shopping technology.
Thus, accurate management of this inventory is critical and may require newer technology to track properly and create a positive customer experience. Inventory management systems are valuable tools in helping to provide a clear view of all stock, allowing retailers to better handle things like inventory allocation, excess inventory and other stock related processes. Here, we will take you through 6 major reasons why updating your inventory management system is worth your time and money.
Benefits of an inventory management system
1. Trusting the report system
Having stock levels constantly up-to-date builds trust in the inventory management software by those who use it. This leads to better task performance, as you and your employees can be certain that the offers you are putting together or the purchases you are approving will be accurate and beneficial for the company.
In turn, you will all use the inventory management technology more, resulting in better data collection that can then be used for future business decisions and team collaboration strategies.
2. Satisfying your customers/buyers
Inventory management systems mean a clearer view for reporting. And better, more accurate reporting leads to better fulfillment, less under or over shipping and selling. You can also sell customers what they want because you are certain that the stock you see is actually the stock that is in your warehouse. This helps you sell and ship what you actually have, leading to less unfulfilled orders and disappointments.
3. Detecting problems sooner
Inventory management systems provide a real-time view of stock levels, allowing retailers to monitor and immediately react if levels ever go amiss, indicating that something is wrong. Being able to spot problems sooner, and thereby make changes faster, ultimately saves the company money by limiting the losses from an unnoticed issue.
4. Investing your cash better
Having a real-time view of inventory levels with full confidence in the accuracy of the numbers allows you to be able to know earlier what products are not selling and will remain leftover for off-price sales. This allows for better-planned sales. Additionally, these call-outs for poor performing products allow you to make changes to your re-orders sooner, and alter wholesale buying strategies going forward. Ultimately, good inventory management allows for smarter business decisions and better cash flow.
5. Missing fewer sales opportunities
Knowing exactly what you have allows you to better cater to your off-price buyers and gives you the ability to identify specific buyers by their purchasing history and habits. This then enables you to reach out to a specific buyer with specific product assortments catered to that buyer. In-stock product identification and buyer product preference leads to better catered offers and thus an increased chance of a sale that would otherwise have not occurred.
6. Improving profit margins with higher returns
Accurate stock levels update automatically with new inventory management system technology. This gives you access to selling the product still in stock as soon as possible, leading to less money lost on warehouse space. Additionally, the quicker the product is sold, the higher the price it can be sold at, since product loses value every day it sits in the warehouse. And a higher selling price leads to higher monetary returns on that product.