Does your business need a solution for managing inventory? Check out these four benefits which efficient and accurate inventory management strategies provide.
Believe it or not, in the average workplace, your staff is going to be productive for less than three hours per day.
While this might seem absurd, you need to think about all the ways that you could be making it hard for your employees to be productive. If you implement strong inventory management strategies, you could double or even triple that number.
Here are four ways to change the way your warehouse does business from a day to day standpoint.
1. A More Organized Warehouse
If you’re in the business of distributing products, whether business to business or directly to consumers, you know the importance of efficiency. You know all too well that time is money and that the more efficient you make your system for your staff, the faster you can fulfill orders. When you fulfill orders quickly, you make your customers happy.
By not hitting snags related to your inventory, you can ensure everything behind the curtain happens without customers noticing.
Managing your inventory with warehouse management software gives you the ability to have an organized warehouse. When you organize your warehouse, your staff and employees can get around efficiently, putting together orders easily because you’ve built a strong system.
You can optimize your warehouse by ensuring your top selling products are easy to get to. Save time by putting complimentary products together to simplify order fulfillment. Speedy fulfillment can give you a good reputation and earn you great reviews.
Since reviews are a way of life for most business online, if you sell online, you need lots of good reviews to keep building your customer base.
2. Save Time and Money
There’s time to be saved and money to be made by having an organized inventory.
You need a strong relationship between how much inventory you have on hand and how much your digital systems record. This way you can reorder before you run out but don’t waste space with any excess.
Keep track of what you have on hand and how many have been ordered so that you don’t have to do any recounts. With good organization, you’ll have a more accurate count of what you have in stock. Stopping the workflow or paying for overtime so that you can perform a recount is a huge waste of time and money.
However, warehouses have to recount their stock all the time, because of inefficient systems and lack of organization. Keep a close watch on your inventory and you don’t have to do any unnecessary recounting.
Every warehouse has slow-moving and fast-moving products. With a good management system, you’ll get notifications about products that haven’t moved and you can add discounts. Go the extra mile with slow-moving products, especially ones that expire, and offer them as a freebie to your best customers to get them to order in the future.
Check out the system that inFlow offers you in order to keep a close watch on inventory.
3. Accurate Orders
Every fulfillment center keeps track of their order accuracy with a near-obsessive eye. That’s because it gives you a measurement of customer satisfaction and employee performance all in one.
When you give your customers accurate orders, they will never have a reason to complain. If your customers are having to call you, return items, or get what they wanted to have sent to them, you’ll have to deal with potentially losing customers.
Attracting customers costs time, money, and lots of effort on your part. Don’t lose them to a weak inventory management system because you don’t have items when you need them.
Product shortages mean you’re going to have to write an email that your customers aren’t excited to see, telling them they can’t have what they want. Telling someone that they can’t have what they want is hard enough, but if they’ve already paid for it, you’re in for problems.
Your responsible for what’s in your warehouse at any given point. Don’t leave your customers disappointed.
Repeat customers are hard to come by. With a strong inventory management system, those hard-earned clients and customers won’t have any reason not to order again.
Show them you’re ready to meet their needs quickly and efficiently by always having what they need. A strong inventory management system ensures customers can always get what they need. That’s all your customers want from you at the end of the day.
4. Be More Productive
At all times, you should be trying to streamline your company’s workflow. You need to make everything easier for your warehouse staff so that they can move with lightning speed.
Keep lots of inventory management tools on site, like barcode scanners that are synchronized with inventory management software. This way, you can improve your productivity and keep things moving efficiently. While on the ground, staff will have everything they need on hand and you’ll be able to keep an eye on inventory.
You can reorder before you run out and keep your staff and customers happy. When you keep your staff happy by giving them everything they need to get through the day, you make work easier for everyone.
Eliminate manual processes with scanners and software. This way, you can allow your employees to focus on the most important parts of their job. Productivity will skyrocket with the right system in place.
Inventory Management Strategies Are a Must
No matter what industry you’re in, if you’re distributing products through a warehouse, you need to optimize your system.
Every second, every extra step, that your employees take in fulfilling orders, they could be working on their next order. Inventory management strategies that enhance their workflow will make you the most productive warehouse in your region.
If you’re expanding your market in the near future, check out our guide for what you need to think about first.