Inventory is essential to any business that deals with products, and efficient inventory management is the essence of a successful e-commerce business. This means that it is vital to have your back-end e-commerce processes in place for a good front-end experience. Rising competition in the e-commerce industry has also led businesses to adopt and embrace advanced technologies to sustain and thrive in the market.
In an inventory-heavy business, effective inventory control is important, and perhaps even critical, to ongoing success. Whether you’re a wholesaler, a retailer or a manufacturer, having enough stock on hand is critical to keep the cogs turning. Therefore Implementing, or improving inventory management controls represent a major growth opportunity for most businesses hence bringing in new efficiencies and control.
But before retailers can think of implementing these advancements, they must first address critical inventory management challenges. So here are the common challenges.
Lack of Real-time Inventory Visibility
This is one of the biggest challenges in inventory management. As a business, you need to know the real-time status of stocks in your inventory. No matter where the goods are, you must keep a keen track of them. Poor inventory monitoring leads to delays in shipping and delivery of stocks, unnecessary shipping costs, and a lack of inventory balance.
Tracking Obsolete Material
In almost every business, you are likely to face this problem at some time or the other.
There will be some products or materials that remain unsold or unused, and they may become obsolete, or past their expiry date.
Overstocking and Understocking
Overstocking happens when a business holds excessive inventory, tying up valuable capital and storage space
Redundant Manual Procedures
Tracking your inventory with basic manual procedures can lead to errors in managing goods.
Understanding Demand and Volatility
Understanding demand and volatility is essential for e-commerce businesses in today’s dynamic markets. Demand for goods can be uncertain and depends on various factors like season, geographic location, and market trends
Keeping up with Overstocks
When you purchase new materials with a few unsold products lying in your warehouse, it can affect your profitability.
This situation mostly arises due to the inefficiencies of manual processes, which causes poor control of stock.
Lack of Integration with Sales Channels
In businesses often sell their products through various sales channels, such as online stores, physical stores, marketplaces, and social media platforms. Each of these channels may have its own inventory tracking system, which can lead to discrepancies and inconsistent updates across different channels
Bizzyeasy Solutions to Complicated and difficult inventory Management:
1. Real-time Tracking: Bizzyeasy provides real-time inventory tracking to monitor stock levels at all times, avoiding overstock or understock situations.
2. Order Management: The platform might offer ways to track, manage, and process orders efficiently to avoid discrepancies in inventory numbers.
3. Stock Warnings: The tool automatically alerts you when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold, allowing for timely reordering or restocking.
4. Inventory Valuation: Bizzyeasy could value inventory using various methods such as FIFO (first-in-first-out) or LIFO (last-in-first-out), providing accuracy in financial reporting.
5. ROI Analysis: By analyzing the performance of different products, Bizzyeasy can help determine the most profitable products, reducing the amount of inventory that doesn’t sell quickly.
6. Supplier Management: Bizzyeasy is embedded with better management and communication tools with suppliers, making it easier to manage purchase orders, payments, and delivery tracking.
7. Returns Management: By offering a system to manage returns, Bizzyeasy ensures that returned items are efficiently restocked, reducing losses.
8. Integrations: Bizzyeasy integrates with various sales channels, automatically updating inventory levels based on sales, ensuring accurate and consistent inventory data.
9. Reporting and Analytics: The platform has detailed reports on inventory levels, sales, orders, and much more to make informed decisions.
10. Barcoding and SKU management: Efficient coding and management of each item in the inventory could streamline tracking and organizing stock.
Conclusion:
Disparate solutions for every process can cause confusion and improper data. A one-stop solution like Bizzyeasy can help you decrease wastage of materials, and attain more efficiencies in your inventory management, and across your organization. Schedule a demo with us to know how our software works and how it can benefit your business.