Home > Blog > Inventory Management: 7 Reasons Why SMBs Need It!

Inventory, for small or big enterprises, is highly important and critical to run a successful and profitable business. Putting it in simple terms, SMBs are all about what they offer and inventory is the biggest asset of the entire business bringing in all the profit. 

Being the core of every business, managing and keeping a good flow of inventory is the biggest most sought after solution. SMBs take up multiple ways in order to have a strong and structured process of complete inventory management. 

However, the constant steps involved in this process can be time taking if done manually and the room for error magnifies to a greater extent.

A centralized inventory management system ensures timely and error-free tracking of stocks, sales and revenue while cutting back on the manual efforts associated with it. 

What is Inventory Management?

Inventory management is an extremely critical process of tracking and maintaining stock of multiple products in a warehouse, online and offline stores and to provide smooth fulfilment of orders received by a business or brand. 

To achieve accurate information on all the purchase cycles, adapting technologically backed solutions of inventory management is what tops the list of sellers to help transform their overall operations. The array of support offered by these solutions not only sorts the complete management process but makes it rather quick and hasslefree helping businesses maintain a healthy flow of their stocks and delivering their products to customers on time at the right costs. 

The data collated by an inventory management software or system allows you to check out the pattern of customer behaviour while making a purchase enabling you to always be updated on your in-demand inventory to achieve good sales. 

Why Inventory Management for Small Medium Businesses (SMBs)?

Prior to having no inventory management systems, SMBs struggled with the generation of final data and error-free reports as this huge task was carried out via pen & paper or with the help of excels, google sheets and other manual tools.

The data entered in this manner on hardcopies were always prone to errors and mismanaged information that would ultimately lead to huge revenue unfulfillment at times. Also analyzing the huge amount of constantly evolving data was a tough task.

In order to get past these difficulties and have a smooth flow of inventory, SMBs today trust technologically crafted inventory management software that provides integration with their old age POS and ERP systems, to cater their requirement of real-time inventory sync across multiple sales channels and overall information of the outflow of inventory operations.

7 Advantages of Using Inventory Management Software for SMBs

Inventory management is important for SMBs as well as big brands to prevent stockouts, manage stock across multiple sales channels- multiple B2C & B2B marketplaces, websites and stores, and ensure accurate recordkeeping. A good e-commerce inventory management software system brings about tons of productive outcomes including but not limited to:

1. Restricted Dead Stock or Out of Stock Items

Dead stocks as well as out of stock goods both harm your business. Inventory management works to provide the right balance between these two issues preventing your business from experiencing losses. 

While too much inventory increases your costs of managing them right from handling, storage, fulfilment, etc., too little of the same results in unsatisfactory customer experience. 

The right inventory management system ensures that you avoid such situations by formulating which products to stock up on and which ones to avoid. This is done by compiling data on the history of inventory being purchased and the shelf time it had altogether. 

With managed inventory, you not only increase your overall profitability but maintain a happy customer base that comes back to you for more. 

2. Minimized Returns 

A major task of inventory management software is to make sure that returns are processed quickly and correctly to ensure customer satisfaction. 

Customers expect easy solutions for returns and to achieve this, SMBs require a powerful system to enable simultaneous updates and revision on inventory being returned and replacements being made. 

A good inventory management system will help you quickly identify the returned or damaged products from current stock, look for a replacement and then deliver the alternative, keeping your customer experience unhinged. 

Apart from this, you will be able to identify return rates and manage any extra inventory in availability to maintain returns placed in future.

3. Increased Inventory Demand

With a good flow of inventory, you require constant inventory updates. Balancing the demand and fulfilment of inventory can accurately be done with the help of the reports and statistics provided by an inventory management software based on purchase histories and customer interests. 

Once you have the exact data of how much inventory is required you can restrict both shortages and leftovers of products. 

Along with this, you can structure your inventory by focusing on fulfilling the demands of majorly demanded goods and eliminating the ones that do not produce enough revenue.

4. Analysed Inventory Turnover

Inventory management software measures the overall inventory turnover of your business and guides you on which goods to focus on.

With the help of Inventory turnover analysis, you understand how fast your goods are being sold in accordance with industry averages and which are the ones bringing in the most as well as least sales. 

While high turnover can mean you are right on track or too little of inventory to be sold, slow ones may indicate bad quality or delayed deliveries, requiring immediate attention. Inventory management system gives you complete visibility on where the problem areas are and the solutions to take up. 

5. Increased Cash Flow

Inventory management systems help increase your overall cash flow by suggesting you the exact amount to spend on taking on new inventory with specific data and reports based on your sales trends. 

Well managed inventory allows you to figure out how much you need to invest on stocks for a smooth course of operations. 

When you are in control of your budget, you see better cash movements and you are able to utilise the money on other points of focus for your business such as warehouse management operations that include tons of hidden costs off either stocking or handling inventory, managing your taxes, marketing your products, enhancing services, etc. 

6. Maximized Savings  

The biggest advantage of inventory management software is helping you save more while accurately maintaining your overall cash flow. 

It is highly important to identify and adjust slow-moving inventory or the ones sitting on the shelf for too long because these severely affect your profitability.

The right inventory management system will enable real-time allocation of stocks already present in shelf spaces enabling inventory turns to increase your total benefits. 

Apart from this, you will be able to calculate exactly how much more inventory you require to purchase for balanced overall sales.

7. Improved Customer Satisfaction

Updated inventory, managed returns and prevention of out of stock items all sum up to provide extremely satisfying customer experiences and all of this is guaranteed deliverable of a good inventory management software.

In this day and age, customers have tons of options to choose from while shopping on eCommerce platforms and to be their top choice, maintain a loyal customer base and keep them coming back for more, you need to have always in-stock goods, fast deliveries, faster returns and customized suggestions to remind your audience to shop for more.

When customers know about the complete cycle of their purchase with real-time updates and consistent delivery fulfilments, they repeat their purchase from you, increasing your credibility and business altogether.

Unicommerce: A complete solution package for your business

With Unicommerce you receive exceptional technology solutions that handle the complete inventory management operations of your business.

Get updates on online, offline and warehouse inventory operations in real-time. Automated updation of inventory ensures complete visibility of business restricting issues such as stock-outs, dead stocks, duplicate entries, etc. 

Tracked immediately and simultaneously in the Uniware app and web version, all the inventory of your business is handled with precision.

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