Having a trusty ecommerce inventory management solution is foundational for any brand that wants to stand out of its competitors and satisfy its customers along the way.
What is Ecommerce Inventory Management?
Ecommerce retailers requires to have a few things to be successful:
- A functional and appealing website
- A good shipping strategy
- Visibility into their inventory counts and locations
Awfully, many of these retailers make inventory mistakes at first that can cost them considerably, like not having an inventory management solution in place.
Ecommerce inventory management is a system that supports retailers to grow in every aspect of their business. The technology enables business owners to simplify warehousing operations and make better financial decisions.
Everything falls into place when you know how much inventory you have.
Why is it Important?
Before beginning your search and implementing an ecommerce inventory management solution, it’s essential to assess the requirement of your business to find an appropriate solution. This is because inventory management touches almost every aspect of your business operations.
Firstly, it provides visibility into inventory counts and locations from when it enters your warehouse until it arrives at your customer. Users can delicately view products that are overstocked, understocked, out of stock, or missing entirely. This type of visibility enables you to better forecast inventory purchases and prepare for potential shortages.
A reliable inventory management system helps your customers in a positive buying experience. As the system automates inventory workflows and updates quantities over your sales channels, inventory counts are always accurate. Hence, counts online are advertised accurately, and customers have a huge chance of actually receiving the right product.
Important inventory management methods for eCommerce
There are some significant points to remember while using inventory management as these points will help your stock go that bit further. They will also assure that you are profiting and keeping customers happy.
- 1
Balance inventory
This is as easy as not overstocking and not under-stocking. It’s about getting the balance right.
You don’t need to have a lot of stock you are having to liquidate. But you don’t even want to have too little stock that you have to tell a consumer that you don’t have the product and push away your target market. These both can lead to loss of profit via clearance sales and bad reviews.
Having appropriate software and handling inventory correctly will help remove this.
- 2
Keep an inventory of safety stock
You will not know when something unexpected happens. As a result, it’s essential to make sure you have safety stock.
There can be a lot of reasons you might need this. Keeping an inventory of the stock will ensure you to prepare for anything unexpected.
- 3
Utilise a kitting technique
Placing together stock to sell as a deal is called kitting, like buy 2 Get 1 Free offers. It supports you to get rid of any overstock at a good price. It also increases average order value and lets customers know they are getting a better deal.
- 4
Look at past purchases to predict future stock
By doing this, you can develop a feedback loop of understanding what stock works. You can examine the stock that requires either boosting or reducing. Tracking stock allows you to see which products sell the best. It also aids in the assessment of yearly trends and can be done as often as you like.
- 5
Be intelligent with storage
While gathering stock to sell, it’s necessary to think about the physical storage of items. Whether storing items in a spare room or a warehouse, ensure the items are simple to locate.
Storing them at a place where you can simply pack and post them means the customer will get the item easily. Base the location on sales and trends and move things around now and again if you want to. Doing this will assist you to keep on top of your stock and will deliver better customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Inventory is your company’s leading asset, treat it like one. Implement the inventory management methods mentioned above to make better purchasing decisions, to develop better warehouse organisation, and to earn complete visibility into what exactly you have in your warehouse and where it’s located.