Keeping multiple warehouses well-stocked while avoiding the pitfalls of overstock continues to be an issue for businesses large and small. The traditional solution is to increase warehouse staffing, but that usually entails a significant increase in warehousing costs, which not every business can afford. Fortunately, new and intuitive solutions such as a cloud inventory management app can improve multiple warehouse management while keeping costs in check.
The Same Old Problem
More often than not, the major challenges of effectively managing a warehouse involve not so much the physical storage or movement of products, which even a team or two can handle with today’s advanced warehouse technology, but product inventorying and tracking. Manually inventorying items can be an extraordinarily time-consuming process prone to errors, and over-reliant on spreadsheets or input-based inventory management software. The hunt for missing items, the trouble of having to reintegrate returns back into stock, or the need to deal with damaged products or items that have surpassed their shelf life can increase the work volume of any warehouse staff beyond their capacity.
A New Approach
Expanding the warehouse team may seem like the only solution, but a cloud inventory management app can help streamline the whole inventory management process at a lower cost. To be sure, a small warehouse team will still be necessary to move stock around and keep it safe, but strategies such as barcode scanning and tracking, digital SKU management, and batch operations, which can be seamlessly integrated into an online cloud based inventory solution, can speed up inventory processing times considerably.
What’s more, with a last-gen inventory management system in place it’s possible to import inventory data straight from your supplier or vendor based on purchase order data. This can dramatically reduce the manual inventorying that needs be done to build accurate stock data.
Built-In Multi-Warehouse Management
That’s not all. An advanced inventory management app like DataQlick comes with Multi Store Locations and Warehouses management capabilities. This allows you to separate and differentiate stock across different warehouses while at the same time retaining the ability to view overall stock performance. When products get damaged or lost, a multi warehouse inventory management system helps you save time by giving your warehouse team the crucial data they need to address the problem quickly.
The Value of Sales Forecasting
Sales forecasting for small business can also be integrated into your inventory management system offering you valuable stock predictions based on your past stock performance and other factors. The individualized, data-driven approach that a powerful inventory sales forecasting tool relies on gives you actionable data that can help you understand subtle differences in stock performance for different warehouses. This makes it easier for you to tailor purchase orders that cater to the needs of your different stores and warehouses, based on customer proximity, shipping practices, or seasonal demand.
Ideally, your inventory management system should feature a mobile inventory control app that empowers you, as well as your senior warehouse staff, to monitor stock performance on the go. A mobile app doesn’t tie you to a computer, allowing you to adopt a more proactive as well as a more dynamic approach to multi-warehouse inventory management.
