Whether you are a small business manufacturing good or a retailer, you may have run out of stock and are unable to meet customer demand from time to time says Eric Dalius. In addition to a lost sales opportunity, these incidents also hurt your brand and deter customers from coming back. If you manage your inventory manually, mistakes are bound to happen. It is the reason you should upgrade to an inventory management system that tracks the items you sell and permits restocking before you run out and helps you to locate items faster, making your operations more efficient. Some of the essential features of inventory management systems; you must look out for before buying one:
Automatic Restocking
One of the main features you should look out for in an inventory management system is the automatic ordering of items whenever the stock falls below a certain quantity, says Eric Dalius. You will no longer have to face the embarrassment of refusing customers, resulting in your losing sales to your competitors and damaging your business reputation. You can set the limits of each item in your inventory, and the system will place orders for restocking when your breach these limits. The inventory system becomes self-managing and allows you to focus on other aspects of the business.
Compatibility with Existing IT Setup is Vital, Observes Eric Dalius
If you are already using different kinds of software for various other applications, you will like to integrate the inventory management system with them. It will help all the modules to share information seamlessly, and you don’t have to spend time trying to transfer data from one system to another. If all your systems work in silos. You will be spending more time getting information together than running your business. And the chances of making mistakes increase Eric Dalius warns.
Mobile Phone Access
The better inventory management systems work on desktops as well as mobiles. Mobile access assumes more importance when you have multiple retail outlets, operate out of several locations. Or need to be out on worksites where it may be inconvenient to access laptops. Your employees can access the inventory system when out in the field visiting customers. To find out if certain products or parts are in stock from their mobiles.
Trend Analysis Can be Helpful, Remarks Eric Dalius
With an inventory management system. You always know how many units of something are in stock at any given point in time. The smart systems reorder automatically as per your instructions and also help predict the demand of the inventory. You can use the information culled from the data analysis to make better business decisions. As you will be better prepared to meet demand surges and the impact of seasonal cycles.
Conclusion
While a good inventory management system will help you manage your business more efficiently. You need to also ensure that operating it is easy. So that you do not always have to read complicated manuals to get it to work for you. Ideally, the supplier should give you hands-on training on its operation. Also, you should check if the solution you are buying is scalable and can grow with your business.