Ecommerce Inventory management is one of the most relevant factors in ensuring that your customers get the right products on time and at great prices. The above can be incredibly challenging to manage if you are running your e-commerce site without the right tools.
Today, we present a tool that can help improve your eCommerce Inventory management. Sometimes, when businesses use another service to handle their inventory database or sales processing, they end up losing crucial insights into their business margins and relevant metrics. By handling these processes internally, businesses can get a better understanding of:
- Where their profits are.
- Areas where they can improve the most.
- Issues that need the most attention.
Radix is a data science start-up company that will improve your eCommerce inventory management. We help you automate your processes related to inventory management and consolidate them into one single platform.
What exactly is Inventory Management?
Inventory Management is a practice of planning and overseeing the storage, handling and delivery of goods in order to reach the business goals. Inventory Management methodologies are often used in the management of many types of businesses including those that manufacture, sell or distribute products or services to consumers or businesses.
On the most fundamental level, inventory management is the process of acquiring, storing, and selling stock. It is understanding how much stock you have, how much it should sell for, where to store it, and how long to hold it for.
Understanding inventory management is critical for every company, large or small. It reduces waste, reduces expenses, and saves time. Keeping up with supply promotes greater customer attention by providing consumers with the things they desire.
Unfortunately, many companies are still unaware of effective practices for inventory management. Some of the world’s largest corporations have failed due to a lack of proper processes and systems.
Why You Need eCommerce Inventory Management
Implementing an efficiente inventory control helps you with knowing:
- When it’s time to re-order: To begin, you must understand when stock is running low. You do not want to be in a position where you are unable to supply items to clients. Consider it like completing your weekly grocery shopping. When you run out of milk, you don’t wait until the container is empty before purchasing more.
- How much to re-order: Assume you run an online shoes store. The white sneakers have sold far more than you anticipated. So you’ll have to order more of those. However, you don’t want to over-order and end up with a warehouse full of white sneakers. Inventory management also contributes to consistent statistics.
- How many new items you shoud order: Continuing with the shoes example, if the white sneakers sell well, will black sneakers sell well as well? Accurate inventory tracking will also help in the acquisition and success of new items.
- How long may inventory be kept outside/in the warehouse: For items such as perishables, this may appear to be self-evident. However, if inventory is not properly maintained, many things may go unaccounted for and unsold. Left to become out-of-date or out-of-style.
Choosing the Most Appropriate Inventory Management Software
Choosing the best inventory management software is a difficult task. You must evaluate the nature of your business, the size of your company, as well as specific challenges and goals.
I suggest you to ask these following questions:
- Is it possible to create customized reports in the system?
- Do you need to be able to use the inventory management software from numerous devices?
- Is the software scalable as your business expands?
- Is the software compatible with other systems?
- Can they help with data migration?
- How good is their technical help while troubleshooting?
- How many users will need to have access?
Your company may need software that:
- Accounts for overstocking and understocking.
- Can analyze data in real-time.
- Considers seasonality.
- Makes modifications based on where the product is in its lifecycle.
You can use Radix to carry out the above mentioned.
Key Points to remember when using eCommerce Inventory Management
Finally, there are a few things to keep in mind while adopting eCommerce inventory management. Keeping these ideas in mind will allow you to stretch your stock a little farther. They will also ensure that you are profitable and that your consumers are happy.
Use Storage Wisely
When amassing goods to sell, it is critical to consider physical storage of products. Whether you keep products in a spare room or a warehouse, make sure they are easy to find.
Keeping them in a location where they can be quickly packed and shipped means the client will receive the item sooner. Based on sales and trends, choose a location. If necessary, rearrange things from time to time. This will allow you to keep track of your inventory and provide excellent customer service.
Maintain Inventory Balance
This is as easy as avoiding overstocking or understocking. It’s all about striking the appropriate balance.
You don’t want to have so much inventory that you have to liquidate it. However, you don’t want to have so little stock that you have to inform a client you don’t have the product, which would turn off your target market. Both of these might result in a loss of earnings due to clearance sales and negative reviews.
Having the right software and properly managing inventories will help you prevent this.
Have a Safety Stock Inventory
You never know when the unexpected will happen. As a result, it’s critical to stock up on safety supplies.
There might be a variety of reasons why you require this. We simply need to look at recent cases of panic purchasing to know that supply and demand can change unexpectedly. Keeping a stock inventory can ensure that you are ready for anything.
Analyze Previous Purchases to Forecast Future Stock Purchases
This allows you to construct a feedback loop for knowing what stock works. You can determine whether the stock should be increased or decreased. Stock tracking allows you to know which goods are selling the best. It also helps in the evaluation of yearly patterns and can be performed as frequently as desired.
Conclusion
Overall, Radix is a powerful tool and will require some time to completely understand. However, it has the potential to be quite useful and time-saving when compared to other eCommerce Inventory management tools. Its easy-to-use interface is backed by features that can truly be game-changing for your eCommerce store.
If you are interested in learning more about Radix and how it might work for your business, we encourage you to sign up for a free trial here.
Read More:
How to Increase Online Sales With eCommerce Analytics
Top 10 eCommerce Metrics to Track