reducing costs

Is It Time to Change the Way You Track Your Inventory?

Your inventory is the lifeblood of your business and proper management is essential to stay competitive in today’s marketplace. Even if you feel you’ve managed inventory just fine for years, there are always new better ways to go about it.

Mistakes in Excel spreadsheets are common, which opens your business up to human error. A lack of inventory management is a cause for many businesses failing. To be truly effective and efficient with inventory, you need a solution that can automate processes, provide real-time data and eliminate errors that cost you money.

Here’s how your business can benefit from a new inventory management solution:

Customer Satisfaction

Your primary concern is keeping your customers happy. Constant inventory mistakes and delays can motivate your customers to find another company that provides faster, better service. If you have frustrated customers, consider implementing a new inventory management software to help track inventory and improve product availability. In doing so, you’ll notice greater customer satisfaction and retention, all of which will lead to a growing business.

Improved Data Accuracy

Smaller companies can typically use an Excel spreadsheet without any mistakes. However, growing businesses immediately experience Excel limitations in regards to data inaccuracies and forecasting problems.

Obviously, data inaccuracies can lead to multiple issues down the road. Besides keying errors, spreadsheets themselves are out of date. When more than one employee has access to them, you end up with even greater errors. If your inventory is shuffled between locations, this causes confusion within employees when they need inventory details. An inventory management system allows multiple employees to work on the inventory which saves time and prevents errors.

Scalability and Growth

In addition to greater control of your inventory, updating to a more robust inventory management solution can contribute to the growth of your business. As your company expands with multiple warehouses, you will require inventory software that will allow you to track multiple line items across multiple warehouses. So ask yourself, do you want to continue using a solution that can’t keep up with your business?

Accurate Forecasting

Inaccurate data leads to serious problems, both in the present and future. Excess inventory write-offs are costly and often the result of not knowing what you have in stock. When you don’t know what’s in your inventory, employees will end up wasting time searching for items, while customers will walk away frustrated because you don’t have the products they need. An inventory management solution with strong reporting features will give you greater visibility so you always know when to order new inventory and track which items move the fastest.

Still not sure if you’re ready invest in a new inventory management solution? Try calculating how many sales you’ve lost due to inventory errors or lack of product availability. The missed revenue should give you enough reason to make the switch to Spire, a more advanced solution to keep customers satisfied and increase your bottom line.

 

Can Business Management Software Help Make Your Business More Profitable?

This is a guest blog post by Diane Ferguson, CEO of Micro-Vision, located in Nanaimo, BC.

Business management software can help manage all aspects of your business and improve overall efficiency. An integrated solution that has order management and inventory control systems working seamlessly as one integrated package will save time, instead of requiring you to spend unnecessary hours putting together reports from a variety of software programs.

Producing detailed and accurate reports will provide insight into your business operations and help you make better decisions to grow your business.

Here’s how an integrated business management solution can help make your business more profitable:

Reducing Costs

Reducing your costs is one method to increase profitability. For a distribution business, inventory costs can be quite high and a fully integrated business management software can definitely help optimize inventory levels to keep costs down. Without software to keep track of your inventory, you will not know when you need to reorder. Too much inventory can result in increased costs, particularly if it’s not being moved fast enough.

Take Advantage of Volume Discounts

Most suppliers will offer a price break when placing a large order to replenish your inventory. However, it’s important to know what to order, and having detailed inventory reports can help you make this decision.

Inventory Data Analysis

Business management software for retail businesses will allow you to make adjustments in your inventory on a regular basis. Your software will allow you to analyze higher-performing inventory, and keep track of trends. You should be able to track how quickly your vendors ship to you through seasonal variants. Some items may sell better at a certain time of year. Your inventory reports will tell you which inventory is underperforming, and give you the insight to keep your higher-performing inventory on store shelves.

Decision Making Will Become Easier

Make better decisions by analyzing sales figures and trends to understand how your business is financially performing. With accurate financial data, making decisions become easier and will deliver results that will positively impact the growth of your business.

Finding the right business management solution can help make your business more profitable. Take advantage of all the benefits of your business management software to better serve your customers, reduce costs and gain visibility to your business operations.