5 Tips on Improving Your Inventory Management System

Inventory management encompasses responsibilities beyond simply overseeing your company’s stocks and storage status. More accurately, it is a complex system of organization that involves tracking the flow of products and services circulating in, out, and within the company.

When a company’s inventory is managed efficiently, it can significantly improve customer service levels, maximize company resources, and ultimately, increase your business’s profit margin. While different companies have varying methods of handling their inventories, there are tried and tested ways to streamline inventory processes.  For example, several businesses invest in highly efficient inventory management systems like ERP (enterprise resource planning).

To elaborate further, here are some tips you can use to manage your inventory more productively.

Assess Inventory Operations Inside-Out

To improve, you need to identify which aspects to improve first. Thus, you need to learn more about the company’s order-to-delivery (OTD) process and learn the challenges, difficulties, and issues that both personnel and customers experience.

Some of the common problems that businesses face in terms of inventory include:

• Inaccurate data — Keeping tabs on the inventory—like counting stocks and delivering parcels—is prone to human error. This leads to inaccurate data, which can be detrimental to company decision-making and may incur losses for your business.
• Lack of communication — Without a centralized system, personnel needs to contact other departments one by one in order to get updated information. Consequently, without proper communication, mistakes become more frequent and may negatively reflect on customer services.
• Lack of coordination — To successfully fulfill orders and reach company objectives, personnel need to accomplish their individual tasks and coordinate properly.

By identifying the common problems and systemic gaps in inventory operations, you can formulate more concrete and data-driven plans that can address these troublesome issues.

Hire Reliable Inventory Personnel

As your business grows and the inventory expands, it is time to consider hiring an inventory control manager. This position is responsible for the operations happening inside your company’s storage facilities. Their duties include keeping track of all the company’s on-hand and in-transit items. They are also tasked with overseeing the OTD process and ensuring that customers receive their orders on time.

Having a manager dedicated to inventory control can significantly help you run things smoother when it comes to your stocks. Hire someone who has experience in working or overseeing customer orders, warehouses, and other storage facilities in order to more effectively manage inventory operations.

Get Assistance from Suppliers

As mentioned earlier, inaccurate data is one of the crucial pain points in inventory management. This is especially the case in big distributing companies, where hundreds to thousands of transactions happen each day. One of the key ways to address inaccurate data is to give suppliers permission to manage inventory lists. They can note down purchase orders and update stock directories so that the numbers between suppliers and distributors always match.

Track Inventory Levels and Turnaround

One essential tip in managing inventories is to always monitor inventory levels. This includes checking for any items that are going out of stock or are overstocked, tracking deliveries in transit, and ensuring that orders were successful. Knowing inventory levels is crucial to a lot of company operations, such as determining which items are in demand, which products you need to include in promotions, and which items you should not order anymore. By knowing all of these data, you can avoid both understocking and overstocking, which may incur losses for the company.

Invest in Inventory Management Systems

Purchasing an inventory management system or using a specially designed inventory design is one of the most useful tools in effectively overseeing your inventory. These programs are armed with several helpful features to make inventory control a lot easier, including a centralized data system, barcode scanning, and OTD trackers.

Keep in mind that there are different kinds of management software in the market, so it is essential to install one that best matches your business’s needs. Talk with inventory consultants or specialists to pinpoint areas of improvement and learn which software will work well for your company.

If you are ready to bolster your inventory management, ANSI is more than happy to have your back. They are an established distributor of ERP and inventory management solutions in the Philippines. Committed to serving Filipino businesses through ups and downs, partner up with ANSI, and improve inventory control for a substantial boost in your company’s performance.