Have you always tracked your inventory manually? It’s time to switch to an online inventory management system like Kentro. Here’s how such a system can boost your sales & profits.
1. Provides real-time access to sales data & stock levels
Inventory management software generates sales and stock data in real time, allowing you to make quick business decisions. You can easily adjust the stock level to cater to a certain market or sales channel. The real-time data can also help refine your inventory forecasting, reducing instances of overstocking, stock-outs, overselling, and other related issues.
2. Helps forecast product demand
With real-time sales data, you can get insights into buying trends and behavior patterns within a certain market or sales channel. That can give you a distinct heads-up on which items to restock quickly, which channel to focus a huge chunk of your stocks, and how to maximize profits during crucial sales periods, including Black Friday and other holidays.
3. Reduces human error
You can ditch spreadsheets with inventory management software. There’s no need for manual stock counting or inputting of details since the software can automate such processes. In turn, the risk of human errors is reduced, and labor costs are minimized. Best of all, accurate stock counts lead to more efficient order processing & fulfillment and increased sales revenues.
4. Limits operational costs
Some of the most costly factors of running a business are employee wages, storage rental fees, and transportation costs. And you can limit all those costs with inventory management software. Since the software automates inventory tracking and other related processes while giving robust customer support, you no longer need excessive in-house IT personnel. Plus, you can avoid the unnecessary costs that come with overstocking, including leasing for bigger storage space and frequently transporting excess inventory to and from warehouses.
5. Improves stock organization
With automated software for inventory tracking, your staff can create better organizational systems and processes. Your employees can easily categorize products by name, size, demand, or other useful parameters. In turn, they can restock items and fulfill orders more quickly and accurately. The result? Smooth daily operations that lead to higher sales.
6. Fosters better coordination between multiple locations
Do you have multiple retail locations, sales channels, and warehouses? Maximize an online inventory management system’s cross-channel reporting to improve coordination between locations. Say a customer is looking for a certain dress in one of your boutique shops, but that location runs low on stock for that dress. The store associates can point the customer in the right direction by simply looking at the inventory system’s cross-channel reporting. They can quickly see which locations have a stock and prompt one of those locations to ship the order to the customer’s address or to the shop where the customers can pick up their order.
7. Integrates with other software
Inventory management software like Kentro can easily be integrated with other existing back-end systems and online tools. For instance, you can link Kentro to e-commerce marketplaces like Shopify & Big Commerce. Using accounting and taxes apps? Tax Cloud, Quickbooks, Xero, and other tools can smoothly be integrated with Kentro. Integrations are also possible for software focused on shipping, payments, utilities & third-party logistics.
8. Elevates customer experience
Besides optimizing your business processes, a robust inventory management system can help elevate the customer experience. Order processes, from adding items to a cart to processing returns, are streamlined, making it easier for shoppers to complete purchases. That can impact your monthly sales, which increase simply because of a smoother setup. Plus, providing an incredible customer experience can boost your brand recognition. That makes your small business closer to being a household name in your niche or industry.
9. Enables seamless scalability
Growing your business is easy and seamless with an online inventory management system. You and your staff no longer have to spend hours establishing markets on new e-commerce platforms and adding more products to your inventory since you can rely on the system’s automated processes.
Plus, you don’t need to worry about the additional expenses that come with adding ancillary systems for new markets. That’s because inventory management software like Kentro can bring all your processes into one place while providing direct integrations with other systems.