In a competitive market, high-quality businesses and their employees rely on established and practical systems to assist them to rise above the competition. Inventory software continuously improves and monitors, integrates, channels, empowers and monitors warehouse processes to ensure businesses will avoid unfulfilled orders and the misuse of necessary time.
Without tracking the amount of inventory a business has, where each item is located, and forecasting an accurate quantity needed for future sales, a company will fail to turn a profit and generate growth. As a result, inventory management software rids a successful business owner of the tedious time spent tracking inventory with pencil and paper and replaces this process with more efficient technology to track when shipments arrive, where raw materials are, and when products are on the move.
Multiple types of businesses use inventory software, equipment inventory software, or even warehouse inventory management software to raise their business to the level of which they previously only dreamt of doing. In a simplified example, an individual company owner may have various suppliers and could be working on an ad-hoc basis in terms of their supply. How long can they maintain effective business practices under these conditions solely using spreadsheets or other less efficient methods of inventory tracking? The answer is that it is more effective, both in cost and time, to use an all in one inventory management software that serves you and your business to ensure that inventory is not over-ordered nor under-stocked.
Inventory Management via Inventory Software
The first step for small and growing business owners after acquiring their inventory is to sell their product to the market. However, this process may be overwhelming, especially when attempting to manually input and interpret your inventory levels and order flow. Having a clear and accurate view of your ROI is integral for all businesses, so inventory software is an obvious choice for any type of business owner that is looking for a better way to track this data. Inventory software controls stock levels, saves space, maximizes the value of labor, satisfies customers, and reduces the use of other fixed assets to also save you and your business from unnecessary costs.
The Cost Of Inventory Software
Most inventory management software is cloud-based and will not necessitate the individual to maintain servers, hire an IT staff, or make other excessive hardware purchases. All of the servers and necessary equipment are managed by the software company itself, saving companies a lot of money, time and energy.
The cost of cloud-based inventory management software is based on a monthly subscription rate, but it is also determined by several other factors, including the size of your business. Retail point of sale software (POS) may be a starting point for most businesses, but when your business is ready to grow and scale, many businesses find that POS software alone is insufficient. This is because POS systems solely keep track of sales and accept payment from customers, which ignores tracking inventory, establishing the quantity and time that inventory needs to be reordered, effective inventory turnover, and does not mitigate human error by automating tasks that help to fulfill sales quickly.
Approximately 46% of the businesses surveyed in Wasp Barcode’s State of Small Business Report fail to track inventory and/or use manual processes. Those companies are not receiving the same benefits in relation to maintaining competitiveness in the marketplace, increased efficiency, saving money in the long run, and freeing up employees to do less monotonous tasks.
Inventory Software’s Role in Inventory Turnover
A key metric for all businesses is inventory turnover: the cost of goods sold divided by the average inventory on hand. If the rate is too low or too high, a business is in danger of overstocking, not meeting consumer demand, and dealing with the deteriorating value of stagnant products on a shelf.
Podium LLC, a manufacturer based out of South Carolina, saw their inventory counting time decrease by 90% when taking advantage of an inventory management solution.
Inventory software helps businesses meet their desired inventory turnover ratio by providing inventory tracking, effective and time-efficient reordering, and accounting integrations which serve to prevent double-entry of data and automate yet another task that can free up time to focus on other needs for your business.
Takeaway
Inventory software is the most effective manner in which a business can successfully manage maintaining proper inventory levels while maintaining high levels of customer (and employee) satisfaction. It can provide business owners with the ability to spend their time doing other tasks besides manually organizing their spreadsheets or over ordering products that are not necessarily needed in bulk at the time. Inventory management software acts as a digitized assistant, allowing for professionalism, profitability, and efficiency to shine through where, without it, only ambiguity and indecisiveness are present.
