Inventory tracking is vital to a company’s health; it helps make sure there is rarely too much or too little stock on hand, limiting the risk of stockouts and inaccurate records. The bottom line is successfully managing your inventory impacts your business’ bottom line.
Inventory management helps companies identify which items to stock, how much stock to order, and at what time. Successfully tracking inventory can seem like a daunting task regardless of the type of inventory you are managing. If you have a successful process in place and it quickly is impacted by turnover, growth, downsizing, or like the year 2020 has reminded us, a global pandemic. The process and results of inventory management affect every aspect of your business.
Here are seven ways to tackle some of your inventory management stresses:
1) Inconsistent Tracking – Centralize your tracking data with a cloud-based inventory management solution with real-time data backup and automated inventory updates.
2) Inefficient Processes – Create a process that leverage RFID tagging technology, mobile devices, and cloud-based software to help increase productivity and improve inventory control efficiency
3) Changing Demands – Integrate inventory management software, and demand forecasting features with your accounting and sales data to identify essential inventory.
4) Inventory Visibility – Add images with product descriptions in your inventory database to enhance accuracy and prevent misplaced inventory. Also, adopting inventory control processes like blind receiving with barcodes and mobile scanners to avoid human error, inventory manipulation, and shrinkage due to theft or negligence
5) Overstocking – Track and manage your high-demand inventory using cycle counting data to set automatic reorder points and optimize shipments by average lead time.
6) Poor Production Planning – Track and manage the availability of the top 20% of the inventory that generates 80% of the demand using an inventory management system with advanced demand forecasting and reporting features.
7) Poor Communication – Introduce integrated dashboards with real-time inventory data and a simple user interface to communicate and manage workflows across accounting, sales, and warehouse operations.
The Apptricity Difference
The Apptricity cloud-based Inventory Management Software and Tracking Solution uses IoT technology to track your inventory in real-time on the web and mobile devices. You get down to the minute visibility of your inventory data wherever you are whenever you want.
With the Apptricity solution, you have access to analytics on shelf-life, inventory counts by location, out-of-stock by SKU, expiration dates by product, and shrinkage. Another feature is the ability to set up alerts on your inventory by store location, warehouse, distribution center, or any analytic data point you choose. Access the workflow engine to automate the movement of products, orders, or deliveries by pre-defined rules you choose.