What is Inventory Management System
When the word ‘inventory’ is heard, in terms of business, the first thing that pops in most people’s head is a retail store. This is a widespread misconception that inventory systems are only applicable in retail operations. While, it is true that retail operations are heavily dependent on inventory management, but so are other industries such as healthcare, education and more.
The simplest way to describe an inventory management system would be to say that it is a place to keep everything in place. Inventory management is a very slow process that could hinder the pace of your work. However, software with the right features can assist you here and make your life easier.
Inventory management software is a system that has labels for each and everything related to your business. You get to keep track of all your data, all your resources and all your files through the software. Whether you are carrying a brick and mortar store, an e-commerce site, a supermarket or a logistics company, an inventory management system is necessary for you. There are many kinds of inventory management systems available, catering to the needs of different businesses.
Inventory management system optimizes the entire process starting from a client placing an order with your vendor to the delivery of the order, mapping the complete journey of a product from the start to the end. Not only does the software give you an in depth view of your products, it also gives you an insight about your customers.
Importance of Inventory Management Systems
Without an inventory management system, there wouldn’t be a way to keep track on the goods, the products and the processes that take place in a company. Thanks to an inventory system, a company can hold all its records in one place. So, all the assets, the location of every vendor and supplier specifications of every item can be controlled by the company from a central repository.
Often, inventory contains movable items and thus, inventory management systems are vital to keep track on current stock levels and analyzing what assets are in demand and move more quickly, which vendors are in demand, and what are the slow moving assets. This allows the organization to understand what they need to reorder, which vendors should be given greater importance, etc.
A comprehensive inventory system offers a lot of benefits such as better business forecast abilities, reduction in labour costs and dead stock, and better customer, vendor, and business associates’ relationship.
When there is data available for your entire months of how well a business is operating, it is easy for analysts to make business forecasts and thus, strategies can be devised looking at the predictions. Thanks to the inventory system software, extra hands are no longer need to be employed by companies to help in keeping track of all the operations that are carried out in the company. Furthermore, the inventory system gives an accurate number of how much stock is left and what stock needs to be replenished. As inventory systems also give acute information of how vendors are doing, how the customers are fairing and how much profit the business associates are earning, better relationships can be established by an organization with its partners.
HowMuch’s Inventory Management System
HowMuch’s real-time inventory system helps in keeping track of suppliers, customers, products and product information in an effective and efficient manner. Following are the features found on the platform:
1. Inventory Grouping: There are hundreds of items present on HowMuch and thus it can be a daunting task to count them manually. There are chances of error in human calculations which is the reason, our inventory management system assists us in grouping all the inventory items into different categories, making it easier to manage all the inventory groups.
2. Managing Product Variation: There can be multiple flavours of chips available.Managing variations of the same product is a little difficult, which is why HowMuch’s inventory management system is designed to allow you to offer any number of different variants of the same product. Every version has its own SKU, inventory number, and price.
3. Vendor Management : HowMuch’s store has products from multiple vendors. Manually writing which supplier to place what order with is not only time consuming but also very frustrating. The inventory Management System in question gives a solution to the problem by providing a feature where the products are placed with its suppliers directly.
4. Tracking Stock: For a successful e-commerce business, it is necessary to be able to have an accurate stock count. Clients might keep on adding items that are out of stock if the stock isn’t kept in track. With HowMuch’s inventory management system, one can easily track the stock counts; learn when an item is out of stock and requires replenishing.
5. Discount: It is hard to put up discount on each and every product, HowMuch’s inventory management System gives you the option to add discount on all products simultaneously by just allowing you to create a promo code that can be used by the buyer to avail the discount.
6. Report Generation: An organization’s profitability can only be determined through inventory reports. Manually keeping track of all your operations and inventories is an almost impossible task. Due to this reason, our management system gives you an indepth analysis of the business through its reports;
- Order Sales Report: This report gives you information about which product has been the most profitable for your enterprise.
- Item sales report: This report gives you an idea of the number of units a product has been sold monthly, quarterly, annually; depending on the filter you have selected.
7. POS system: Vendors directly receiving requests from customers makes the entire operations process much more efficient and timely. A shop keeper’s dashboard will show him the pending orders and the orders in progress. He also has the ability to change the status of an order from unpaid to paid and vice versa. Similarly, an option is available for him to set whether an order is a pick-up or has to be delivered.
A timer is present at the top of the screen marking when an order was placed and how much time has passed since. Additionally, an item can be traced by either searching it on the search bar or scanning its barcode.
Notifications are sent to vendors, through SMS, when an order is placed. The vendor’s stock is automatically updated once the support team confirms an order.
8. Alerts: Promotional Emails and Newsletters are scheduled on our Inventory Management System to be sent when the marketing team approves of.
Updating of Inventory
Instead of manually updating each and every item, user can upload a CSV file which has the name and contact of a vendor against the product he is providing. The product has an inventory ID for easy identification as well as the number of units available. Once a user uploads this file, the inventory system is updated.
Conclusion
Inventory management systems are necessary for any business; be it of a large scale or a small one. HowMuch’s inventory system is one that is efficient, easy to use and reliable.
