The success of your business depends on a few important factors. If you fail to give enough attention to any one of them, you’ll find yourself at risk of losing profit and even potentially alienating your clients and customers. Staying on top of all the things that can make or break your business is never an easy task. It demands a lot of time and just as much hard work.
Inventory management is certainly one of the most important aspects of running your own company. In keeping control of their inventory, business owners often make mistakes. Some of them are small and fairly easy to fix, but some can have devastating consequences on the business. The tools you rely on to check your inventory are very important. Luckily, all of these mistakes are easy to prevent with the use of a good inventory control app.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the four most common inventory control mistakes business managers tend to make. With the smart choice of inventory management system, not only will you be able to avoid them, but you’ll also free yourself of a lot of stress that comes from having to juggle different key aspects of running a business.
1. Selling More Items than You Have in Stock
If you’re running an online store, you’ve probably at least once sold more items than you had in stock at the time. Customers have placed an order and were perhaps even charged for their purchase. Come fulfillment time, you realize that you’ve run out of that specific item and restocking it will take some time. You then have the unpleasant task of informing the customer that their order will be delayed and having to refund them in case they are no longer interested in the product.
This would have never happened if you were using an online inventory app to track your incoming and outgoing stock. If it happens more than once, your previously loyal customers may choose to buy from another online store that utilizes a superior inventory management system than the one you’re using. As a result, your customer base and your revenue will dwindle and you’ll have a lot of work to do to take your business where it was before.
2. Stocking More Items than You Need
Most retail businesses have warehouses where they stock items that are sold on their website or in their store. To avoid running out of certain popular products, managers tend to order them in large quantities. Unfortunately, they won’t always sell, leaving you with plenty of unopened stock taking up precious warehouse space.
You don’t have to be an expert statistician to determine how high the demand is for specific products. A good inventory control app like DataQlick also serves as a sales forecasting app. Taking a number of different factors into account, it calculates the demand for each product and lets you know the optimum amount of stock you should order.
3. Not Adjusting Your Prices
Some products will retail at prices that are higher than their competition when they first appear. However, as the demand for them increases and the manufacturers find the way to reduce the cost of their production, their prices will become more competitive. Because of this, it’s important that you frequently compare your prices to those offered by your competition.
There are some online retailers that allow their users to submit a report if they find lower prices for specific items someplace else. They will then verify this report and – whenever it’s financially viable – they will match their price accordingly. This is a good strategy, as it builds customer loyalty and ensures that you have a strong standing in a tough and competitive business environment.
4. Not Checking Your Inventory Often Enough
Before the inventory control software was invented, business owners had to manually keep track of their inventory. Most of them would close their store for one day towards the end of the month to do a complete inventory check. This wasn’t a very good practice, as they were unable to serve the customers during the check and would consequently lose a day’s worth of profit.
A good mobile inventory app allows you to track your incoming and outgoing stock in real time. More importantly, a single tap on the screen of your smartphone will give you insight into all the different aspects of your business. Your business will operate without any interruptions, and your clients will keep returning because of how satisfied they are with their shopping experience. This is something every business owner strives to achieve, and a dependable inventory control app will help you get there.
