Posted 07.07.2022
Every retailer, whether they operate within the B2C or B2B space, will rely on inventory management for the smooth running of their store.
For ecommerce brands, everything moves at a much swifter pace, making automated inventory management systems essential.
Rather than spend enormous amounts of time counting stock, creating spreadsheets and updating systems associated with your online store, brands are investing in real-time inventory management software.
As an example, if a real-time inventory management system specified that you had 100 products in stock and someone selected an item online, initiated and completed the purchase process, the system would automatically change the number of products in stock to 99.
You and your team don’t have to do anything, it is entirely automated.
In a periodic inventory management scenario, this sale wouldn’t be updated on the management system until ‘inventory day,’ or perhaps not even until after it.
From small operations to large brands, any company that needs to track inventory to get an accurate picture of stock levels can benefit from automated inventory tracking.
At Evolve Trader, we partner with numerous B2B brands across the healthcare, automotive, food and beverage, wardrobe management, cleaning and agriculture sectors who all benefit from automated inventory visibility.
With that said, many B2C businesses have undoubtedly invested in an automated inventory tracking system, too.
Put simply, you can only sell products if you have them in stock. By monitoring your stock levels, you can ensure that you have enough inventory to meet customer demand.
Knowing how much stock you have also helps you:
And more.
There are numerous ways real-time inventory management can improve both customer experience and customer satisfaction, including:
This is true for all ecommerce brands, but especially those that have to deal with seasonality. Knowing exactly how much inventory you have at all times through an automated system results in eliminating stock out situations entirely.
Not only can you avoid stock-outs altogether, but your customers will too.
Out-of-stock items mean lost sales, which is as frustrating to you as it is for the consumer looking for an out-of-stock item.
The more they experience your online store not having products available, the more likely they are to boycott your company entirely.
You can utilise historic data to see when sales are about to peak and compare this to your inventory data to ensure that you have enough to meet demand.
You can also use a real-time inventory system to ascertain what products have been underperforming recently, helping you make strategic decisions around updating your product line.
The beauty of having an accurate understanding of what inventory you have is that you will be able to pack and ship your products swiftly. While there may be issues with the supply chain that is out of your hands, your customers can still have their orders delivered to their doorstep quickly.
In the instance that a product that was specified as being in stock on your ecommerce store ended up being out of stock (due to your manual inventory checks not being done yet), the only option available to a brand is to contact the customer and inform them that the item they have ordered and paid for is not available.
The customer can then decide whether to wait for the item to be in stock and sent out straight away or to cancel their order and request a refund.
With real-time tracking software, you’ll never have to have these awkward conversations again. People who shop on your site will be met with products consistently in stock at all times.
Just as automated inventory control can benefit your customers, there are advantages for your team too, including:
Your accounting and finance team will have a complete picture of sales figures at the push of a button, helping them with their day-to-day tasks such as profit and loss, forecasting sales potential and more.
With more traditional systems, the finance team is constantly working from old information. By using real-time system, they have more up to date information for recording sales and allocating budgets etc.
If you think it’s frustrating for a customer to be told that an item they ordered (that your website stated was in stock when it wasn’t), think about all of the time wasted by your packing employee looking for that out-of-stock item at your warehouse.
With the rapid increase in online shopping and demand from your competition, getting as many orders out the door as quickly as possible is vital.
Therefore, when errors are caused by outdated inventory processes, your team can lose precious time. If this happens often enough, staff morale can drop considerably.
With automated inventory management, this will never be a problem.
If you’re only periodically updating inventory, there may be occasions when a stock order is processed and products that aren’t performing well are reordered. Suddenly you have excess stock which needs to be stored somewhere.
Too many products in a small space mean that your team may be operating in an unsafe environment and could be slowed down when trying to pick through all of the items to find the right one.
There are also warehousing costs to consider. If you have to rent more space to house these items, especially ones that aren’t selling, you have to pay for the service which eats into your budget and lowers your profits.
Real-time inventory management prevents problems arising relating to the warehouse floor.
Our product catalogue management software includes real-time inventory solutions along with multiple other features such as customer order management, product returns management and more.
We believe this to be the best inventory management software and can be integrated with mainstream ERP, PIM, CRM and MRP systems as well as bespoke or custom build systems.
If you’d like to learn more about our inventory software, such as how it can help you better monitor inventory levels, assist with predicting future sales, help your business save money by only reordering stock that’s performing and increase customer satisfaction, you can request a demo and a member of our team will be in touch as soon as possible to schedule a demonstration.
