With the advent of Covid-19, the whole products and services domain has not remained the same since. Today, there is nothing that is not sold over the comfort of online shopping. This ingenious move has become the backbone of SMEs and smaller companies helping them be niche experts or compete against the big giants. One significant feature that has helped the success of the Online Shopping and eCommerce model is Real-Time Inventory Control.
Here is how Real-Time Inventory Control has helped SMEs:
Lesser Inventory holding
For smaller product companies, manufacturing and storing of products take up a lot of their processes and investments, and likewise, during peak times, the extra load on the production lines also can block further channels. This is where eCommerce has helped millions of SMEs and Startups – in identifying the right demand and reaching out to more customers while keeping the production at optimum. Interestingly, it has also helped in creating de-marketing during off-seasons, i.e. spreading demand over non-peak seasons through discounting, complementary offers, and analyzing the impact of the same through real-time control.
Better analytics
Real-Time control of inventory helps in better analytics of your data region or product-wise. Tracking is the core benefit of real-time inventory control but that tracking component is incomplete without analytics and drawing out efficient processes for the company. Simple things like drawing out shorter delivery routes, localization and mapping of regions, creating hubs, and spokes for areas with high demand help you in easing off the load during peak times, saving a lot of money, and gaining customer loyalty by efficient and timely delivery of products.
Going Paperless
Going paperless today is not a luxury but a necessity. Integrating your warehouse with ERP software and Online booking tool gives you a complete view of your organization. This helps to bring in all the departments and processes at one platform eliminating pen and paper and giving away the need for physical storage of space. From forecasting to inventory management and finance management for all clients during all seasons, you can now do it from a single platform helping you contribute a small but essential bit to the environment. It also gives you the ease of applying inventory concepts like LIFO, FIFO at ease.
Real-Time Reporting
Reporting is an essential process in any organization without which the management will not effectively forecast the future or pinpoint what is blocking the processes. With Real-Time inventory control, the reports are dynamic – i.e. can be generated at any time and any place. It gives a much intricate control of the organization. Also, in an ERP system, you get to map employees with the data that they can have access to and get a full report of the changes made and by whom.
Future Trends
Knowing only about your current operations is not important. To be a market leader in these competitive times, you need to start understanding the audience and what might be the trend in the future. Integrating your Social media along with Inventory management and ERP will allow you to collect insights directly from the audience which on analysis can give you metrics to improve on ideas to work on a new product and get the ‘First Mover’ advantage.
Real-time inventory control removes all the blind spots from your vision and helps you in streamlining your data and processes. To know more about how can your company benefit getting real-time data, drop us a mail at [email protected] or call us at +91-91111 00862