The Importance of Inventory Management

Inventory management is an essential, but often overlooked, part of eCommerce. To have any chance at running a successful business online, in-store, or omni-channel, you’ll need a strong, accurate inventory management system. You could have the best products in the world, but you’ll struggle big time if you lack strategic inventory management.

Proper inventory management offers many key advantages for your customers and your business as a whole.

Here’s what you need to know about inventory management and how to streamline it.

What’s Inventory Management?

Inventory management involves storing and processing your products. It includes your warehouse functions and the way you update your operations when inventory is moved through a sale.

When it comes to inventory management, the key is balance. Having too much inventory, or overstocking, is a waste of money and can lead to you losing profits with last-ditch effort sales, but under-stocking is equally as dangerous. Selling out frustrates customers, and can result in many lost sales.

Advantages of Inventory Management

Bad inventory management leads to under-stocking or overstocking, and both hurt your business. On the other hand, efficient inventory management has several key benefits including:

• Operations efficiency. Adequate inventory management helps your employees save time and hassle. Instead of manually writing reports and checking on the warehouse, you’ll be able to automate those processes and give your employees more time to spend on important tasks. Overall, this will help your efficiency as a company.
• Track inventory location. Not knowing where your inventory is can be incredibly stressful. Inventory management allows you to know your inventory location at all times, which makes it easier to identify any fulfillment or shipping issues.
• Prevent sales loss. Inventory issues can lead to lost sales. If you mark items as out of stock but end up finding the inventory, you lost sales. Directing customers to the wrong location for an item will also frustrate them and lead to lower customer retention. Inventory management is crucial for making as many sales as possible.
• More accurate vendor orders. Overstocking is still an inventory issue. You will face higher storage costs and be forced to hold huge sales to offload inventory when you have too much. Inventory management helps you keep track of how many you have of each item, so you can change your order frequency to better fit your needs. Inventory management makes re-ordering easier than ever.

Inventory Management Tips

It’s clear why inventory management is so beneficial for your business, but how can you improve your inventory management system? Here are a few important things you can do:

• Consolidate your inventory management for all channels. Inventory Intellect by Listing Mirror brings all your inventory for all channels into one easy-to-use platform.
• Determine your par levels. Par levels are the least amount of stock you need on hand to meet demand. Track your previous sales to find your par level.
• Forecast demand. Inventory demand changes based on the time of year, especially during the holiday season. Plan for fluctuations and know what inventory you need before you hit peak season. A huge part of forecasting demand is using your past sales to predict future sales.
• Communicate with supplies and vendors. Keep in touch with your suppliers about busy times of the year, and make sure to get orders in early.

The Best Inventory Management System

Inventory is crucial for your eCommerce business, and that is why you need the best system to automate and simplify the process. Inventory Intellect by Listing Mirror is the most comprehensive solution for growing your business with inventory management. Inventory Intellect can be added to your Listing Mirror subscription for only $100 per month and is included for free in our Sapphire and Diamond plans.

With Inventory Intellect, you can streamline all of your inventory management needs including:

• Purchase orders
• Web orders
• Replenishments
• Forecasting

With Listing Mirror and Inventory Intellect, you can sell more and work smarter. We’ll make inventory management an easy, reliable process so that you can grow your business with ease. If you have any questions about our listing software or Inventory Intellect, we are happy to help! Try it out for yourself by signing up for a risk-free 14-day trial.