At OGL software, we have encountered many businesses that struggle with inventory management. This crucial part of running a business can be the difference between a functional, efficient organisation and one that leaves customers frustrated.
When managing a large inventory, these problems can feel even more insurmountable, leaving many businesses to wonder if there is an alternative to manual entry and management.
Managing a large inventory comes with a range of challenges. Some of the main issues you’ll encounter include overstocking, understocking, discrepancies and managing multiple storage locations.
These challenges can lead to increased costs, inefficiencies and dissatisfied customers. As a business scales, these issues only become more prevalent. With large inventories, the need for a more systematic approach emerges.
Without the right tools and strategies, businesses risk getting lost in the weeds of large, unorganised inventories, and ultimately losing valuable customers.
Conducting regular inventory audits, also known as stocktakes, has been a key practice in managing large inventories. However, with the advent of advanced software like Profit4, manual stocktakes become a thing of the past.
Profit4’s real-time inventory tracking ensures your stock levels are instantly updated, eliminating the need for constant, manual counts.
This system supports perpetual inventory management, allowing you to automatically monitor and adjust stock levels as transactions go through your system. This significantly reduces the risk of discrepancies and ensures your inventory is always accurate and up to date.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is an integrated system that merges all business processes into a single platform.
Since inventory management links to many other parts of a business, it can be useful to have everything in the same place. An ERP system will offer you real-time data, fast communication between departments, and a centralised dashboard for managing many aspects of your business.
With an integrated ERP system, you can automate manual inventory management tasks, reducing errors and gaining a complete view of your inventory. This then allows you to make data-driven decisions.
If you have multiple sales channels, you should synchronise your inventory across them to ensure all departments are working with the same information.[Cv2]
Whether you have online stores, physical locations or third-party platforms, using an integrated ERP system allows inventory levels to update across all channels. This reduces the risk of overselling, ensuring your stock levels are accurate no matter where your customers are shopping.
Warehouse layout and organisation affect how easy it is to manage large inventories. You should optimise your warehouse layout to improve efficiency and ensure that high-demand items are placed in easily reachable locations.
Profit4 can help by identifying your best-selling products and those that are slow-moving, providing valuable insights that inform your warehouse design. Additionally, creating optimised picking lists and streamlining routes within the warehouse can reduce order fulfilment time, further improving the overall efficiency of your business.
Another important factor in large inventory management is automated reordering. Reordering is the process of placing reoccurring orders for popular stock. This is another task you can automate with ERP software, allowing you to automatically generate orders when stock levels are low.
Profit4 can set minimum, maximum and optimum reorder levels, allowing you to prevent stockouts and reducing the need for manual tracking and ordering. This then frees your staff to focus on other more pressing tasks.
One of the reasons why so many businesses choose to automate their inventory is so that they can harness the power of analytics.
Having comprehensive data to draw from allows you to make predictions relating to your inventory. This is especially important when managing a large inventory, as there are many moving pieces you need to analyse to make informed decisions.
Profit4 also allows you to track important KPIs such as order accuracy, carrying costs, and inventory turnover. By regularly monitoring these metrics, you can quickly note areas to improve and make decisions to enhance your total inventory process.
Suppliers can bethought of as the lifeblood of your business – the first point of contact that allows you to effectively manage a large inventory. Maintaining a strong, communicative relationship with your suppliers is a great way to ensure your warehouse is always full and your customers can get the products they need.
Profit4 comes with robust SRM(Supplier Relationship Management) tools that help you communicate with your suppliers. You’ll be able to raise a purchase order (PO) in just a few clicks, create rules to automatically reorder bestsellers, and view the status of orders raised – all from dedicated supplier dashboards. [Cv4]
Streamlining your shipping process is another way to help manage large inventories and ensure timely order fulfilment. One way to achieve this is by implementing automated label printing, which reduces manual entry errors and speeds up the packaging process.
By integrating courier services directly with your inventory management system, such as Profit4, you can further accelerate dispatch times.
This integration allows you to automatically generate shipping labels, schedule pickups and track deliveries – all from one centralised platform. All of this will help you save time, improve accuracy and make sure your products reach customers.
Handling returns is another important part of inventory management. Automating the process can help you to streamline returns within a large inventory.
By integrating returns with the rest of your system, you will be able to automatically update inventory levels, make fast return authorisations, identify other products with potential issues and manage any restocking or disposal of returned items.
Ensuring your team is well-versed in your inventory management system is key to maintaining efficiency. With Profit4, extensive training sessions are not necessary, as the software is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly.
However, to keep your staff informed about new features and the best practices, Profit4 provides access to a comprehensive knowledge base and regular product updates within the software. This ongoing support helps your team to stay in the loop and make informed decisions.
Struggling to manage your inventory doesn’t have to be the reality of your daily operations. With fully integrated software like Profit4, you will have all the tools you need to effectively manage your business. With a range of features to help manage your stock control, Profit4’sreal-time tools cover processes from managing your inventory to organising your warehouse.
The software also allows you to manage everything from order management, customer relations and finance to reporting and analytics. It’s an all-in-one solution to help you manage the most important aspects of your business.
