June 3, 2020 
Inventory management plays a vital role in building a sustainable, scalable and profitable eCommerce business.
No matter how expert you are, how bigger or smaller your business may be, what products you sell, or who do you serve, lack in your inventory management can bring bigger challenges in your business success.
Spreadsheet system is not always helpful in identifying sellers based on their performances or even tracking the stock details when it comes to customer services and serving stock or out of stock information to them.
Thus, inventory Management Software is really an essential tool for your business to gear itself up.
What is Inventory Management System?
An overarching term, inventory management that refers to the tracking system for every phase in your product life cycle which helps you keep a detailed record of each product, new or returned as it enters or leaves the warehouse or point of sale.
This tracking includes sales forecasting, product ordering, supply chain & warehouse management, and customer fulfillment solutions.
Being a component of supply chain management, inventory management tracks the flow of products from manufacturers to warehouses and gradually to point of sale.
It is the act of organizing and supervising NCAs or non-capitalized assets (physical assets), or inventory, and stock items.
Here are the ‘3-I’s of a good Inventory Management System that can help your business speed up the internal processes and maximize profit:
1. Increases your profit
Your inventory refers to your product lines or stock items (present at the warehouse, sold or returned). It’s a risky venture to invest in a new product line every other day with no particular knowledge about the inventory or stock items.
Here comes inventory management software to help you minimize this risk by streamlining your storage costs. It ensures a healthier bottom line for your business.
Economic order quantity (EOQ)
EOQ calculations in Inventory Management Systems helps you identify the most cost-effective ways of ordering new products by calculating the costs of storing your products and the cost of ordering.
This automatic calculation helps you minimize your warehousing fees and save money.
POS or Point-of-sale system
POS can be integrated through a powerful inventory management software which helps you give more accurate sales projects by lowering the risk of investing in non-profitable products.
This solution is referred as forecasting which involves tracking the sold products, their number of units and estimating the number of units that can be sold in the future.
This is an automated and cloud-based tool with accurate forecasting features can update your stock numbers in real time, it can calculate the units that are needed to be ordered.
Customer demand management
It is another feature which helps in profitability. Inventory management software help you identify and sell the right products at the right time to meet customer demand.
This helps you sell more in the here and now, but it also helps you win customer trust by building the customer base for future.
2. Improves customer satisfaction
When a customer is trying to buy something and find it to be out of stock or wait for long for a product to arrive, this is not at a pleasant experience altogether.
And these experiences do not put your business in the positive light as a trustworthy or reliable brand which can fulfill its customer’s demand or needs.
Thus, it negatively impacts your customer’s loyalty and hence, makes your customers less likely to go for your product in the future again.
Inventory management software can help your sort these challenges easily and quickly by minimizing stock accountability errors and delivering the best possible experience for your customers.
Utilize forecasting & automated order protocols to speed up product availability
A powerful Inventory Management System includes forecasting and automated reorder protocols. This enhances your product availability by giving you predictions on product demand based on customer’s buying nature. It basically helps your customers find the exact item (the color, size or other preferences) that they need.
Integrated warehouse management & logistic features to improve order accuracy
A quality Inventory Management Solution also integrates warehouse management to help you maintain an organized warehouse. This feature lowers the risk of losing a track of your merchandise that you’ll simply shove new inventory into a random spot, forget it’s there, and lose track of your merchandise.
On the other hand, the logistics feature in Inventory management software tracks the time that is taken for a particular order completion to help you avoid unnecessary failed delivery promises and give your customers an accurate delivery estimate.
POS system to balance multiple sales channels
It becomes a challenge to process each and every order accurately while ensuring your store has enough stock on hand in case of your eCommerce business runs through several platforms from an online store and a brick-and-mortar location to a pop-up location, and an Etsy store.
Inventory management software integrates with your POS system to help track sales and stock across different channels. Thus,managing your business’s inventory as a whole gets easier by removing a case-by-case basis inventory calculation.
3. Identifies & solves day-to-day business challenges
Establishing a successful eCommerce business is not an over-night job. There come many challenges to face.
A powerful Inventory management software includes different other tools and can be integrated with multiple feature directly or indirectly to help you run your business more efficiently.
By integrating warehouse management
Inventory Management System helps improve the feature to provide more accurate order details and streamline efficiency within your warehouse.
This also helps in gauging warehouse space, reducing storage costs, and integrating scanning systems which can provide real-time stock updates and inventory movement.
By integrating supply chain logistics features
Inventory Management System helps you manage multiple locations and allows you to order production bulk for all your locations while moving products between locations as per demand.
It never lets you lose track of where any product is at any point of time.
By integrating with Point-of-sale (POS) systems
Inventory Management System assists with product forecasting and helps you keep a track on your real-time sales and stock levels.
By integrating with book-keeping systems
Inventory Management System helps you plan inventory orders and analyze the working capital of your business.
By integrating Accounting systems
Inventory Management System gives you the power to accuracy in forecasting metrics and finding the most reasonable order quantities for stocking.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
CRM systems integration helps link order completion with customer interactions and service requests.
With Vinculum’s cloud based IMS or Inventory Management Solution, businesses can accelerate their growth. Request a demo or get in touch with the experts at Vinculum today!
