Effective inventory management is the lifeblood of any thriving ecommerce business. Yet, a staggering 43% of small businesses need to track their inventory, leaving money on the table and risking stockouts that can drive customers straight into the arms of competitors.
Excellent inventory management can transform your business. Indeed, whether you want to improve your stock inventory management or the equipment used in your business, you’ll find all the tips below.
Key Takeaways
- Set minimum stock levels to avoid stockouts and lost sales, while also optimizing inventory costs by not overstocking slow-moving products.
- Use inventory management software to automate tasks like generating purchase orders, determining optimal order quantities, and providing real-time inventory visibility.
- Regularly review inventory data to identify trends and make informed decisions about which products to stock more of or discontinue.
- Implement a cycle counting process to improve inventory accuracy without shutting down operations for a full physical inventory count.
- Choose the right inventory management techniques for your business, such as just-in-time inventory, ABC analysis, dropshipping, or cross-docking.
- Partner with a reliable third-party logistics provider (3PL) to outsource inventory storage, packing, and shipping, allowing you to focus on other aspects of growing your business.
Make an inventory
First, you must start with the basics and create a proper inventory. This used to be done manually with photocopied charts and pencils. However, such systems could be more efficient because they take much time to set up and manage and are vulnerable to human error.
The good news is that you can now get specially crafted equipment rental software perfect for inventory management. The benefits are increased accuracy and efficiency, which have a knock-on effect of helping your business run more smoothly as well.
For stock, adding it to the systems may be as simple as scanning it via barcodes as it arrives. However, for equipment, you’ll need to add barcodes or QR codes to enable tracking and take pictures for your system.
Add tags
Once you have your management software set up, it will make sense to add tags. Tags are a way of quickly categorizing your stock or equipment that will help you keep better track of it.
You may add tags that include color, size, or specific shapes for stock. For equipment manufacturers, departments, and tags, stating whether something is in use will be helpful.
Monitoring Your Inventory
One of the most significant benefits you can reap by using tracking software is that you can drill down and access deep insights into the needs of your stock or equipment. For example, you can easily track which departments request certain kinds of stock and how quickly they use it.
You can also track things like how often a piece of equipment is used, what it is used for and where in your company it is being utilized. You can even track who is using it which can be great for improving safety and security in your organization.
Schedule Your Orders and Maintenance
Lastly, with improved inventory management, you can also schedule better orders for restocking and maintenance. Indeed, when it comes to restoring with proper inventory management, you’ll never need to be in a situation where you have orders that you can’t fulfill again because your stock room is bare. Additionally, inventory management allows you to refine the number of items you keep in stock at any point. Thereby not only preventing selling out but also stopping overstocking and the waste of space and money this can lead to.
Equipment inventory management will help your employees save time. This is because you can more easily determine the overall use pattern and properly schedule item maintenance before it breaks down, ensuring an uninterrupted workflow.
Essential Industry Insights for Further Reading
- Shopify’s Ultimate Guide to Inventory Management: Comprehensive guide covering inventory management basics, techniques, and best practices for ecommerce businesses.
- BigCommerce’s Inventory Management 101: In-depth article explaining key concepts, strategies, and tools for effective inventory management in ecommerce.
- 10 Inventory Management Techniques You Need to Know: Detailed overview of essential inventory management techniques, including ABC analysis, just-in-time inventory, and safety stock.
