If you’re trying to decide whether it’s time to get an inventory management solution, we’re here to help you figure it out. If your small business is growing or you’re looking for ways to be more strategic in estimating demand for particular items, using an inventory management systems can help. Here are three signs it’s time to up level your inventory management techniques.
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Three signs it’s time to get a scalable inventory management solution
1. You have a large inventory
If you’re using spreadsheets to manage your inventory, you’ll find yourself with a growing headache as your inventory volume increases. After all, your spreadsheet probably has columns covering everything from cost and retail price to purchase and sales orders.
As you start increasing the amount of data on the spreadsheet, you’ll find the system requires longer processing time. With hundreds of columns to track and update, you’ll be faced with an increasingly complex and difficult task.
However, with a cloud-based inventory management software, you can say goodbye to long loading times. It’ll also track the inventory movement and inventory levels of all your SKUs in real time, so you’ll always have the latest inventory figures at your fingertips.
You will also be able to set reorder point alerts for individual products to ensure you’ll always have enough stock on hand, without the worry of disappointing customers.
2. You are experiencing stock variance
Stock variance occurs when the inventory counts in your records differ from the actual quantities on your shelves.
Reconciling your stock levels is more complicated than just adjusting your records to match the physical amount you have on hand, as stock variance can be a warning sign of mismanaged inventory or, worse, inventory theft.
Moreover, you’re also opening your business to an increased risk of human error by doing manual data entry. Finding errors on sheets of figures and data can be challenging, especially when you’re managing hundreds of products on a slow spreadsheet.
To solve the problem of human error, you may want to look into automating the inventory management process with a cloud-based inventory management software. If you’re selling on multiple channels, good inventory management software lets you keep an eye on all your sales channels from a single dashboard.
3. You have other software for different aspects of your business
Ideally, all of the platforms and systems you choose for your business should complement each other. Every software you choose for your business should be compatible and integrate easily with the rest.
Doing this ensures maximum automation across all your business processes while minimising the chances of human errors. You’ll be able to pull and push data seamlessly from one integration to the next, ensuring that you have accurate data and records.
Moving to a scalable inventory management solution is the first step. As your business grows, you may find that it’s time to open up new storage facilities. If this is something you’re thinking about, check out this article on maintaining inventory control over multiple storage facilities.
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