Do you have problems managing your stock?
Having too much inventory on hand is a liability since it ties up capital that you need to handle more urgent business expenses. Running out of stock, on the other hand, translates into lost sales.
Automating the stock management process will help you to keep just the right amount of inventory required to optimize sales and make the most of available storage space.
But what makes a good stock management system? Here are seven essential features to look for in a stock control system.
Table of Contents
Scalability
Whether you’re a large or small business, your stock management system must have room to grow. A scalable system can handle more users, the larger capacity of inventory and upgrades.
Even though such a system can be expensive, it will pay off in the end. This prevents a situation where your business is forced to change the stock management systems to accommodate the growing business.
A change of inventory systems means you have to rework the present workflow and train your employees afresh. This will affect your inventory operations. It will also affect your website, especially if you run an online shop.
Changing systems every time your business expands is costly. A scalable feature makes your system able to accommodate possible future changes. This ensures the smooth operation of the business.
Demand-Planning Function
Managing inventory in a distribution center or a warehouse goes beyond storing the goods where employees can easily locate and pack for shipping. Inventory management requires forecast into what consumers want when they want it and the best time to ship the products.
Your business needs a stock control system that has real-time demand functionality. By using past and forecast data, this functionality will help your business predict demand. This will help you maximize productivity. It will also reduce the wastage of time and resources.
This feature gives your business an opportunity to make an informed decision across the supply chain. Demand planning makes you have the right stock levels that support effective distribution management. You will spend less money on safety stock.
Events-Monitoring Tool
This feature generates real-time notifications about operations procedures. This gives you an opportunity to run reports according to the most updated data-not from weeks ago or last quarter.
Gone are the days that you have to wait until the end of the day to receive mission-critical data.
The immediate availability of critical data helps you to make better business decisions. You will be in a position to counter the impact of ever-changing forecasts and demand. This is particularly important for businesses with multiple locations.
In a situation where you’re managing a number of distribution centres and warehouses, it’s very easy to make mistakes without the help of this feature.
Using reports and analytics generated by this feature, you can easily tell the status of every warehouse.
Tracking Feature
You need a stock system that tracks your inventory at every stage. You need a feature to track your inventory by barcodes, serial numbers, RFID tags, and other IDs.
These tracking tools make it quick to process data from the point the products make way into your warehouse.
You also need an audit of all product movement. This is especially important if your business deals in consumables. If you end up needing to recall a certain product, traceability will enable you to recall only the consumables affected.
Without this feature, you will have no option but to recall all products. This includes the affected products and the ones not affected. Such an act is likely to lead to massive revenue loss.
This inventory software company provides traceability software that’s built with pick and tuck away in mind feature.
How does this feature work? When you scan the tracking tag of stock, you’re able to learn the exact location of your product in the warehouse.
Then, the system utilizes this information to pick and tuck away processes by developing efficient routes for your employees. This reduces loitering in your warehouse and boosts productivity.
Centralization of Functions
You need a system that centralizes both your basic and complex warehouse functions.
With it, you can easily complete inventory details such as product history, stock levels, and other product specifications.
Data should be sync to all parts of the system so that all your business functions run on the same information. This is an important aspect of disintegrating data silos within your operations.
When data is synced, there is a high level of cooperation from all teams within the organization.
Speaking of centralization, you can also synchronize your data with that of the vendor. Synchronization allows your vendor to manage inventory remotely. It is a great solution if you are in a long-term contract with the vendor.
Vendor managed inventory come in handy in situations where you want the products to pass directly from the supplier to the customer. This makes this type of product movement less stressful for you.
Advanced Data Analytics Capability
Advanced data analysis tools are important in supply chain management. These tools will help your stock system increase forecast accuracy. This will help you optimize transportation performance and analyze returns.
When inventory management and data analysis merge, the product is a lean, effective supply chain system. It helps to keep your shelves stocked, and prevent overstocking too.
It will also optimize inventory levels for all points across the supply chain, from the purchase of raw material to shipping of finished products. Another major win is reduced inventory costs.
Automatic Replenishment
This is an important feature if your business heavily depends on vendor goods (raw materials) to produce their own. Automatic replenishment feature will help you create and control purchase orders.
Some systems have templates that automatically synchronize data from other parts of the system. This makes it easy to email vendors directly from your inventory systems.
Some inventory software automatically creates purchase orders using your reorder points. This means when your stocks reach some levels, the system generates orders with specific quantities for each item.
You can approve this order the way it is or make adjustments before emailing it to the supplier. This feature helps to eliminate overstocks and stock outs.
How Secure Is Your Stock Control System?
It doesn’t matter if your system is hosted on a local station or in the cloud – there’s a need to consider security measures. After all, you need to protect your data from hacking or theft.
Loss of data can seriously hurt your business. You need to keep your data safe and private. The software you use should have the best security and have a mechanism to retrieve data if a data loss occurs.
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I am Very Enthusiastic about Writing Tech, Smart Phones, Products Reviews, Offers, and deals. I have been writing on tricks5.com since 2015.
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