Having a reliable and reputable inventory control plays an integral part in keeping your business going and gaining regardless of the type of business you own.
This is why a lot of firms from various industries and also markets throughout the globe remain in a continuous hunt for a contemporary, instinctive inventory management software that can transform such a time consuming, error-prone, and inefficient process into a less tiresome, reliable, and also effective one.
Inventory control involves a collection of methods and measures that ensure that sufficient amounts of stocks are kept in business versus the demands of customers and customers while controlling the cost of keeping stocks to a minimum.
The marketplace is swamped with a lot of inventory management software and the options possibly have actually bewildered you when you were at the point of acquiring. There is no such thing as outdated software though.
Besides ensuring that your inventory system can do basic inventory control and incorporates barcoding and scanning, accounting, and demand forecasting, as long as it bears the following and attributes, you are still on the right track against the competition:
USABILITY AND USER FRIENDLINESS. One great way of finding out whether your software passes in terms of usability and user-friendliness is by having a technologically challenged group of people try to use it.
If they did not have a hard time scanning through the system, then that’s good news. As much as possible, keep away with inventory systems that are too complex to use as this can hurt the efficiency of your staff and demand too much learning time.
Besides, it might necessitate IT support which, if unavailable, can hamper the business operation.
MOBILE-FRIENDLY. The present data show that over 5 million people from all over the world now own mobile devices and the majority of these connections are smartphones.
As one of your reasons of investing in an inventory management software is to achieve efficiency in business operations and an edge in the highly competitive world, you might want to make sure it is also mobile-ready and friendly such that whether you are accessing the system through a mobile browser or an app, viewing the information and extracting reports is still seamless.
Investing in a fancy inventory software is useless if it only works on a desktop computer and can only accommodate limited accesses.
EASILY CUSTOMIZABLE. The requirements you had when you were at the point of buying your inventory management software may vary from the requirements you will have over time.
Hence, making sure that your system is scalable and welcomes customization is necessary. This will help ensure that your system can still do the job right regardless of whatever changes are thrown at it.
SECURITY. No matter how great your business has been doing, if your competitors can see your whereabouts through, then you will still be left behind. This is when security matters.
Invest in inventory management software that implements data encryption, proper permission, and user access.
It should know that inventory records are not for everyone in the company to see. Managerial rights must thus be incorporated to ensure that only authorized people responsible in the managerial decision making will get access to the relevant data.
REAL-TIME. Access to real-time data is necessary especially if the management team is away or the business is maintaining multiple branches. This is to ease the management of inventories from these branches.
Make sure the software you acquired can facilitate a no brainer sorting feature and displays the real-time inflows and outflows of inventories.
VISUAL INVENTORY READY. Visual inventory is vital to avoid the negative effects of unfamiliarity in items that bear technical or similar names.
Having a visual inventory-ready system may not sound like a necessity but it actually encourages employees who are fond of visual representations to plan, monitor, and manage inventories better.
BARCODES, QR LABELS, BARCODE SCANNING. When in the old days, the barcoding system did not prosper because of its high hardware requirements which were then unavailable, nowadays, barcoding, QR labelling, and barcode scanning are already considered vital features an inventory management software must have as they contribute a lot in achieving efficiency for the whole inventory management.
Thanks to it, staff can easily scan every incoming or outgoing item to and from the inventory.
If your inventory management software lacks this feature, then you might want to think over where you went wrong.
REORDER POINT ALERT. Included in the demand forecasting feature, reorder point alert alerts use when particular products almost reach their restocking points or when their expiry dates are coming close.
This prevents the occurrences of stock-outs, especially of those salable items. If your system cannot keep track of this aspect, then your stocks’ availability is at risk which will possibly disappoint your loyal customers.
CUSTOMIZABLE TAGS AND FIELDS. You will come across a wide number of inventory management software in the physical and online market today and most likely notice that they almost bear the same variety of features.
That said, the chances of you ending up with a software that has features you do not need for the moment are high unless you can afford to form an in-house software development team that can come up with software you exactly need.
If you are still planning to buy one, as much as possible, pick the inventory management software that upholds and takes your business’s individuality into consideration.
It should be at the least ready to implement tags, features, and custom fields that can be used based on your requirements.
INVENTORY REPORT AVAILABILITY. You have decided to invest in a digital solution for your inventory management works because you also wanted to improve in your decision-making like when you are going to need to create POs or purchase orders.
So, if your inventory software is not able to present to you your needed reports any time of the day, any day of the week, then you may have just invested in the wrong software.
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