Whether your business manufactures products or only sells them, holding inventory can cost you money. When it’s not well managed, inventory turns from an asset into a burden, and your company’s bottom line suffers.
There are no secrets to effective inventory holding, only good inventory management practices. The three strategies that have the greatest impact on your inventory are planning, monitoring, and quick decision-making. With an online inventory management app, carrying these out becomes easier.
Inventory Planning
Inventory piles up when purchase orders are not optimized to your needs. The problem is that the inventory needs of an organization can change from month to month, which is why a dynamic planning solution is necessary. Ideally, you want to be able to set up automatic purchase orders based on pre-defined conditions, such as low stock, or to delay inventory purchases when you have too much stock. Choose a cloud inventory solution that has this capability.
Inventory Monitoring
Tracking your inventory in real time can make the difference between good and bad inventory management. Combining data from barcode scanners and other tracking solutions with the visual tracking features of an online inventory management app offers accurate, up to date monitoring at any hour of the day. You can check stock, understock, profit margins, cost of carrying inventory and more based on current inventory data. This valuable data informs the next strategy.
Quick Inventory Decision-Making
Should you order extra stock before the weekend? Should you postpone a purchase order? Is the special deal the vendor is offering you worth the money? With an online or mobile inventory management app, you can answer all these questions in a matter of minutes.
You get a breakdown of all the numbers that matter so that you can make the right decision while avoiding incremental costs or disrupting your working capital. In this way you can also avoid the build-up of stock that occurs sometimes due to supplier inefficiencies.
In conclusion, you can improve the results of your inventory practices with an online or mobile app that includes inventory monitoring, planning, and management features. The best part is that you don’t even have to be an inventory expert to use such an app.