As prices continue to rise, effective inventory management is more important than ever.

Anyone who has tried to order furniture or purchase a car in the past year knows that we are currently experiencing severe supply chain woes. If you own a business, you have undoubtedly  encountered them and the high prices that accompany them. Although you cannot solve this global issue, efficient inventory management can minimize the impact supply chain issues have on your business. Especially in these challenging times, the importance of having sophisticated and automated inventory systems in place cannot be overestimated.

Greater efficiency.

When your inventory management systems are poor or nonexistent, a great deal of time and effort is wasted every day. Staff may devote hours to searching your warehouse for products, sending emails to each other, poring over confusing spreadsheets, and looking through files.

An automated inventory management system takes much of this pressure away by giving you access to a comprehensive set of data about your merchandise in real time. Instead of agonizing over the tasks we described above, your employees can get involved in completing more interesting jobs and providing direct service to customers.

Accurate information about product location.

It is challenging enough to run a single physical store. It becomes much more complicated if you have several locations, or also sell your products online. When this is the case, manually keeping track of what is in your warehouse can go from daunting to impossible.

However, inventory management software makes even the most complex multichannel inventory tasks easy. That’s because it keeps track of every piece of merchandise you have from the time it arrives at your warehouse door until it leaves in a shipping box or the hands of your satisfied customer. Better still, once you have the program up and running, you can quickly find what a buyer needs with just a few clicks.

Enhanced customer experience.

As a business owner, you do your best every day to make your customers happy. One of the most effective ways to improve customer satisfaction is to immediately provide your shoppers with the merchandise they are looking for.

A poor inventorying system opens the door for errors. You might incorrectly tell the buyer that you have an item when you actually don’t; alternatively, you might incorrectly say that something is unavailable when the opposite is true.

Mistakes like this can be avoided with an automated inventory management system. Once it is in place, you will have fewer unhappy customers and will be less likely to lose sales.

Keep your promises.

Your reputation for truthfulness and integrity should mean everything to you as an entrepreneur. When you make a promise, you are committed to doing all you can to ensure that your word is kept. Unfortunately, a faulty inventory management system leads to inaccurate knowledge of your stock that can derail even your best intentions.

For example, imagine that you told a customer that you would deliver their merchandise no later than 10 days from now. Then you discover that your out-of-date inventory practices incorrectly showed that you had the item in stock when you actually didn’t. An automated inventory system prevents incidents like this from happening by keeping constant track of each piece of merchandise, allowing you to successfully meet your obligations to your valued customers.

Reduce storage costs.

With prices going through the roof, you can’t afford to have excess stock on hand. After all, doing so often leads to the need for extra storage space, which can be expensive. If you don’t have an accurate grasp on how much of each product is in your warehouse, you are more likely to under- or over-order.

Incorporating an affordable inventory management system into your business model will help you streamline your product ordering and invoicing. You can even modify orders on the fly before they go out to vendors. Once your inventory management system is up and running, you can expect greater accuracy and a significant cost savings stemming from your greater efficiency and access to completely accurate stock counts.

Streamline the re-ordering process.

When you conduct detailed tasks by hand, there is a greater potential for errors and oversights. Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to manually entering product codes and specs on purchase order forms. The results of your mistakes can lead to shortages or overages and even over-spending.

Good inventory management software gives you access to all of these fine details, enabling you to easily manage updates. As a result, your orders will be completed more quickly and contain accurate numbers.

The prices you and your customers face may have risen. However, inventory management software can help to cushion the blow by making your internal processes more efficient and enhancing the buyer experience. If you are not currently taking advantage of all the benefits this software can bring, talk to your payment processor today about upgrading your current systems.