3 Ways Inventory Management Software Helps Improve Productivity
Regardless of the industry your business is in, be it education, distribution or manufacturing, keeping track of your inventory is critical. For some businesses, this involves the laborious process of tracking manually. Manual inventory tracking gives rise to human error and is very time consuming. Needless to say, when it comes to inventory management, the smallest mistakes can lead to costly losses.
Reconciling all your inventory needs into an inventory management software or control system will help improve accuracy and productivity.
This post takes a look at the key advantages the right Inventory Management Software will bring to your business.
Never treat all stock keeping units (SKUs) the same
When it comes to inventory management, there is nothing like one-size-fits all solution. Each product has its own unique supply and demand variability patterns. Considering 80% of sales results from 20% of products, you need to pay closer attention to the 20%. Inventory management is all about proper product management. This will help maximize your sales as well as profits. Your everyday goal needs to be maximizing on resources on your more profitable products. Spending too much time on the less profitable products will only strain your resources.
Accuracy
Another way in which inventory management software will help improve your business’ productivity is by increasing accuracy. As aforementioned, when maintaining your inventory manually, you have to deal with the natural human error problem. Human error leads to losses as well as time wastage which is spent reconciling the figures. With manual inventory management, you ought to think about typos and wrong calculations. It is very easy for a clerk to accidentally add an extra zero to the end of the purchase order. This will lead to disaster. It may even cost you a loyal customer.
Computerized inventory systems ensure accuracy. Everything is automated so no more human errors. So long as the core software is working properly and it has been coded the right way, you will be guaranteed of consistent accuracy in inventory management.
Save time
When managing inventory manually, every sales receipt has to be reconciled with the physical inventory. Based on the size of the business and the number of products it deals with, manually maintaining data can be time consuming as well as daunting. The use of a computerized POS (point of sale) system will help update the master inventory list automatically and even in real time. The only task left for the managers is just to confirm that all the reports are accurate. The manager can then print the reports which highlight inventory that ought to be restocked.
Having an inventory control system in your company will make things more profitable, productive and efficient. Although the initial setup cost may seem to be a tad high, the benefits the system will have on your business far outweigh these costs. If you don’t have inventory management software, you are missing out on a lot. It is time to make an upgrade.
