Importance of an Automated Inventory Management System

In today’s highly competitive business environment, retailers strive to achieve consistency, effectiveness & profit in their business but cumbersome manual processes continue to hurt them. Whether you are a wholesaler, manufacturer or retailer; inventory management can maximize the value of your business. Although E-Commerce is showing an upward trend, firms are not yet aware of the importance of holding an automated inventory management system.

By having an inventory management system in place, you can track, forecast and replenish the inventory in a timely manner. It provides clear insights of what is happening in your business, enabling you to see what products are moving and what products are sitting on the shelf taking up valuable space and resources. Having this information handy, it enables accurate reporting and provides an opportunity to see where the improvements can be made.

Let’s zero down some more:-

Saves Time

Time is money; the amount of time saved by the business is the biggest benefit of using an automated inventory management system. For instance, in the retail industry, if a brand owner maintains the book of record manually, they need to reconcile each sales receipt with every piece of physical inventory which can be tedious and time-consuming.

If the same store uses an automated inventory management system, the inventory would get updated every time the sale is made. Whenever the stock gets exhausted, the system will inform and offer options whether to refill or end the product depending on the demand of the product. Automated tracking and reporting will save hours of manual entry and helps to a make smarter business decisions.

Increases Accuracy

An automated inventory management system increases accuracy as resources are no longer required to work on paper documents and spreadsheets; reducing clerical errors. Automated solutions help to obtain accurate operating costs, track the cost of sales and can easily identify the best and worst performing products. It also helps to figure out how much inventory you have on-hand and enables to prevent product shortages.

Increases Productivity and Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits of using an automated inventory management system is, it simplifies the work process within the organization and this ultimately results in enhanced productivity and improved efficiency. Without real-time visibility, it is easy for the orders to get misplaced, messed up and every person associated needs to find out the loopholes of the order processed which hampers productivity. Automated system ensures that information passed from one employee to other and department to other department and without any delay which leads to reduced errors.

Synchronization of Inventory

Sellers who are selling on the multiple platforms such as eBay, Amazon as well as other e-commerce platforms, an automated system can synchronize your inventory across all the sales channels. The inventory on the every sales channel gets updated automatically once the sale has been made on either of the marketplace.

Sellers won’t require logging into various marketplaces just to update the stock. Linking products on various marketplaces and managing changes seamlessly results in more efficiency and productivity of the business operations.

Consistency

Spending hours in analyzing data from the different marketplace is never a scalable solution for any business and when the volume of your order grows, manually doing each task becomes a nightmare. Businesses can operate more efficiently when the processes are executed in a consistent manner.

By using an automated inventory management system, sellers can ensure that all orders, report and other documents are uniform; enables ease in reading and can easily dig out information. This ultimately results in increased sales and profit as it provides easy to access business insights, product performance parameters and inventory levels.

Conclusion

An automated inventory management system will make your e-commerce venture successful across all the platforms. Investing in the automated system may cost you more upfront, but in the long run, it would result in cost savings and increased customer satisfaction. Since the products you are offering are the company’s biggest asset, it is important that they are managed effectively.

At eSellerHub, we develop customized inventory management system that will scale your business by effectively managing your stock . To know more, contact us today!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are some advantages of an automated inventory system over a manual system?

Going ahead with an automated inventory system makes the entire process quick and accurate. Scanning barcodes or QR codes become less time consuming and more manageable than manually sifting through inventory sheets.

Can all sellers implement an automated inventory management system?
Those who handle inventory in-store, warehouse, or other storage mediums can use automated inventory management. So if you are a wholesaler, retailer, or manufacturer, inventory management can increase your business value.

Will the inventory management software make updates?
Yes. If an automated inventory management system is in place, the inventory would be automatically updated every time a sale occurs. So, you will receive real-time updates on stock levels. Also, at times when the stock gets over, the system will notify and provide options on replenishment or closure based on the product demand.

Does it sync inventory from various marketplaces? 
Yes. For sellers selling on several platforms like eBay, Amazon, Walmart, and other e-commerce platforms, an automated inventory management system can sync your entire inventory and display it in a single dashboard.