Gone are the days when the only way of shopping was by visiting the brick and mortar stores. Today you can shop from anywhere in the world through various ecommerce platforms available on the internet. It is effortless for the customers to shop online, but it's equally tedious for ecommerce businesses to manage these orders. Ecommerce businesses showcase a wide range of products on their platforms. To ensure the timely availability of these products, their inventory needs to be adequately loaded all the time.
Prompt and proper inventory management is vital for such inventories. But often, with the increase in the size of inventory, inventory management becomes complex.
When it comes to ecommerce businesses, inventory gets more diverse, and thus inventory management gets a little more knotty. For such inventories with a wide range of products, traditional inventory management techniques such as manual handling do not work. It is advisable to use inventory management software to manage inventories for ecommerce businesses. Inventory management software automates the management process and handles the inventory more efficiently, accurately, and productively. Moreover, it saves a considerable amount of time and workforce for businesses and facilitates real-time inventory tracking. Let's dive deeper and take a look at some of the major perks of inventory management software for ecommerce businesses.
#1 Automation Of Inventory Management
An ecommerce business holds an inventory full of thousands of varieties of products of different sizes and aspects. It's very important to handle such inventory carefully and precisely as even a little error in management can lead to a considerable loss to the business. Inventory management software automates all the operations inside an inventory of the ecommerce business. It automates manual processes like record keeping, inventory tracking, inventory accounting, etc. When done manually, these processes take a lot of time, are prone to error, and become tedious, but inventory management software carries out all of these processes effortlessly. This saves a lot of time for the business and reduces the requirement of the workforce.
#2 Real-Time Tracking
Inventory management software helps track inventory and maintain the real-time record of the total items present in the stock. This feature is essential for ecommerce businesses that require the necessary inventory to be present always. Amongst many inventory tracking systems, RFID and Barcode systems are widely used. These two systems give real-time updates regarding the number of items in the inventory and their respective location. Inventory tracking systems help not only track the inventory inside the warehouse but also throughout the supply chain.
RFID inventory systems use RFID tags with a microchip consisting of a transponder to track the inventory. The transponder is used to store, receive, and transmit data to and from the system. RFID readers installed in the various checkpoints thus record every movement in or out of the inventory by tracking these tags. Similarly, barcodes and barcode readers are used by barcode inventory systems for tracking items. These tracking systems record every movement, thus maintain accurate records of actual items present in the inventory. They keep businesses real-time updated regarding the amount of inventory present and ease their tracking.
#3 Better Visibility Inside The Inventory
Inventory management software enhances the visibility of your inventory. In simple words, it means that you'll be able to locate the items needed from the stock very easily. Inventory management software, with the help of inventory tracking systems, helps maintain accurate and real-time records of total inventory levels. Inventory needs to have good visibility, so to ensure that precise inventory levels are maintained every time. This, in turn, helps to ensure that every customer order is fulfilled on time with the correct stock in place. Often, in messed-up inventories, wrong items are delivered to the customers due to poor visibility, which badly hurts the business's reputation and customer trust. Thus, the more visible inventory stays higher the profit generated by the ecommerce business by serving the customer's right.
#4 Mitigating The Possibility Of Dead Stock And Stockouts
Deadstock is referred to stock that hasn't been sold, holds no scope of being in-demand in the future, and has been in the inventory for a long time. Deadstock represents a loss to the business. On the other hand, stockouts happen when a business runs out of inventory without fulfilling customer requirements. Stockouts are not good for a business as it can lead to decreased sales, therefore fewer profits. Moreover, stockouts can affect the business reputation and drive customers to find alternative platforms to meet their demand. Inventory management software mitigates these possibilities by demand forecasting.
Inventory management software uses historical records of past trends and customer shopping traits, present trends, and seasonal trends to predict future demands. This feature helps ecommerce businesses in maintaining the right inventory levels for meeting the future needs of customers. This feature is very useful during yearly sales; by looking at customers' past shopping trends, businesses can prepare to maintain correct inventory levels. Thus this helps in meeting every customer's demand.
#5 Customer Retention and More Profits
For a successful ecommerce business, it needs to maintain the optimal and right type of inventory always. If a customer gets his needs met every time, a sense of trust develops towards the business. By matching customer expectations and respecting their faith, a faithful and long-standing relationship can be maintained between customers and companies. These goals that every business holds can be met by maintaining the right kind of inventory at the proper levels. This helps customer retention by ensuring that no customer is disappointed by the platform, and every demand is met on time. Better customer retention rates can help a great deal in building a good reputation for the business. A good reputation thus attracts more customers who buy goods from the ecommerce platform, which further leads to generating more profit.
Wrapping Up
Ecommerce businesses handle a wide range of products in their multiple inventories. For ecommerce businesses, it's beneficial to use inventory management software to manage these multichannel inventories. It automates inventory management and thus saves time and workforce for the ecommerce business. Moreover, inventory management software helps companies in real-time tracking of the items in stock. With real-time tracking and accurate record management, the inventory management software helps increase inventory visibility. Investing in the right inventory management software is a fruitful and long term investment. Thus it is advisable to employ inventory management software for long-term gains.
