How to Choose an Inventory Management System

In the early stages, retailers focus on starting their own business, building market share, and maintaining a sustainable business model. But when those “early-stage” challenges are left behind, retailers need to think about growing their markets, strategic expansion, increasing sales, and growing their customer base to profitability. Retailers can overcome these complexities of market conditions, consequences, and innovations in the business model with the right inventory management solution. 

The flexibility, scalability, and adaptability of technology help retailers enhance their business efficiency easily with less cost. In addition, an inventory management solution like NetSuite eliminates manual processes, enhances business operations, and facilitates a robust distribution environment. In this blog, we explore how retailers can address their biggest pain points and how scalable technology can help retailers choose a scalable and cloud-based inventory management solution.

Overcoming pain points of retailers with the right inventory management system

Maintaining an optimal inventory level is an essential part of the business of retailers. If the stock is less, then it leads to stockouts and unsatisfied customers, and meanwhile, if the stock is more, it increases the carrying cost and inventory levels.  Intending to perform lean operations that do not affect additional goods or waste processes, retailers are coming up with better management strategies to manage customer demand, reducing (or eliminating):

• Inventory costs
• Stockouts
• Unavailability due to changes in demands
• Invalid order duplication
• Risk of loss
• Excess storage costs
• Decrease in customers
• Unnecessary shipment lead times

These problems create financial losses to a company and make the business inefficient. With a scalable inventory management solution, a company can overcome these problems and have real-time visibility to all its business operations

Inventory management includes ordering products, storing them, and managing them. The main feature of inventory management is to provide the right product in accurate quantity in the provided place and time. Inventory management needs to keep detailed records of each product in stock, manage non-capital assets and monitor the movement of products from retailer to end-user.

Good Inventory Management

The important component of supply chain management is an inventory management solution that expands from the source (such as a manufacturing or distribution center) to the end-user. The remaining opportunity is that it can either tie up money and adversely affect organizational profits or improve companies ’profits and base and save money.

Analyze the two scenarios:

• When your company may run out of "deadstock" in its warehouse or retail store. This suspension uses working capital and uses physical space when stationary. Products under consideration may be on the verge of expiration and become non-refundable and unusable soon.

• When there are not enough supplies in stock, a crisis happens when customers ask for goods. Current Tariff Situation in which aims at foreign supply sources, or your company's new e-commerce site may create new and unprecedented demand levels for certain items. These make your customers unsatisfied.

Today's inventory management processes include advanced technology. For example, scalable inventory management software enables live updates on the number of items by default. In addition, cloud inventory management software helps to send information about the inventory and can easily be sent to other users and partners in different subsidiaries and locations.

Scalable Software Platform

In this innovative world, the term "scale" means to grow or expand in a proportionate and generally profitable way. In the software sector, in particular, a scalable system does not need to be redesigned to maintain a high level of performance as the workload increases.

More users in the system can fetch these increases, the need for higher storage capacity, increased transaction levels, or any other event that pushes the solution beyond its core capabilities. While software selection does not always appear to be a requirement, scalability allows your inventory management solution to grow, transform and adapt to your company.

By minimizing complexities and preparing for future expansion, scalable platforms open the door to changing needs while helping retailers adapt to their changing business environment. Because the software is designed to grow with the company, retailers can continue to use the same software longer. Combined, these benefits enable companies to protect their investments and make the most of them.

Is Your Software Configured for Scalability?

At times, retailers experience growth that transcends their technology. Out-of-date legacy software lacks integrations with other systems and solutions. Otherwise, a retailer requires other features such as dashboards, API, mobile capabilities, which the new cloud-based software offers.

The main problem of retailers in this competitive business environment is that they can’t spend resources and time on manual inventory management systems that lack minimal requirements. So companies are taking advantage of cloud-based platforms that meet the needs of the enterprise.

For a growing company, the right technology can achieve a better scale economy and improve efficiency with less manpower. Retailers can reap more benefits by choosing the right technology.

The Best Approach: Crawl, Walk, Run

During the software selection process, an inventory management system that benefits your company requirements should be given priority for optimizing the business. The step-by-step process of implementing an inventory management system helps to evolve a strong foundation and leads the company to success. Before the implementation of the system, evaluate your business and analyze your goals along with your current situation.

Analyzing Your Current and Future Requirements

Retailers need to evaluate their current needs and future growth plans to find the right inventory management system. Predicting the future is never easy because assessing the current situation, identifying any technical gaps, and reviewing upcoming plans can help retailers get on the right track.

Key questions to ask include:

1. What do we use now and how does it work for us?

2. What are the limits of our current solutions?

3. What do you want for one to five years from now?

Getting the Right Products to the Right Place at the Right Time

Whether a company starts retail or seeks to achieve an increase in market share in the sector, it will lose out if it fails to build an efficient inventory management system. Not only can the company not operate on a scale, but it will always lag in the number of people handling all manual inventory management processes.

Retailers can reduce costs, reduce waste, meet customer expectations and manage the future with accurate inventory data recorded, tracked, and optimized using a robust software suite. The inventory management software like NetSuite provides an accurate count of the inventory items and eliminates human errors. This can be achieved mainly through the barcode scanner feature in the automation process.

These advancements enable companies to enhance their profits while minimizing inventory investments. With a cloud-based inventory management solution, retailers can save them from the change in demands, decrease or eliminate loss, automate the business process, and eliminate redundancies and errors. Most importantly, the system confirms that customers receive their exports on time, which is essential for a growing retailer.

Why NetSuite?

NetSuite is the #1 cloud ERP software that simplifies and automates your business processes to enhance the efficiency of your organization. NetSuite ERP acts as the best solution in the management of your inventory, finance, accounting. Sales. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Human resource management (HRM).

What the #1 cloud ERP offers:

• Industry-leading practices like robust workflows, role-specific dashboards, and KPIs.

• Robust financial management functionality.

• The unified data model enables the seamless flow of real-time information.

Remember to opt for the right option while choosing NetSuite Services. Jobin & Jismi is an Oracle NetSuite alliance partner with more than 9+ years of experience in  NetSuite services. Stay in touch with us for more information.