Managing the inventory is the most challenging yet an integral part of any business. May it be a Manufacturing plant, Warehouse or a Retail business, A failure in keeping a complete track of inventory levels may lead to some gruesome mismanagement in the overall business and increase its costs.
Back in the day, inventories were usually managed by skilled workers and inventory management, if done manually, becomes a labor intensive process with need to manually update information at each step which can cause a great deal of time and human errors.But as the computerization spread across almost every business, there was also a change in how the inventories were managed. The Inventory Management System/Software was introduced in the market by the software gurus.
This system is basically programmed in tracking, predicting, and reordering goods.All the goods are tracked through the entire supply chain or the portion of it a business operates in by the Inventory Management System. Through this, the producer can keep an eye on each and every movement of the inventory from production to retail, warehousing to shipping. A business, in accordance with these insights can make much more thoughtful or better decisions. The system has some many more various key features programmed which are specifically aimed at supporting businesses to perform inventory related tasks. Some of the key features are listed below.
Reorder Alert
Have you ever been to store or any retail market to purchase something and found out that its out of stock. In retail businesses, there are many possibilities of inventories running out and not being available to customers. This leads to the customers being dissatisfied and cause a loss for the business. The Automatic Re-ordering tool is feature which is programmed to alert the company’s managers/supervisors that a certain product is running out and needs to be re-ordered. Hence, it will prevent the running out of inventory in a business. This feature is also used in the manufacturing plants so that goods are always available when the production is going on and avoid the stalling of process due to no inventory of raw materials.
Inventory tracking
One of the most beneficial features of the Inventory Management System is the Inventory tracking. This feature makes use of barcodes or other means of tracking which comprises of lot tracking, serial numbers or revision numbers to track all the commodities from the plant till it reaches the customers. All the barcoded goods are scanned which will automatically update the systems with all the essential information. This function will be performed in all the stages from the warehouse till customer. All of this process leads to having the most perfect information of the inventory and the manager/owner can make the best use of this knowledge and delegate much better decisions.
Inventory Control
The inventory control is feature which abolishes the need of controlling/managing the inventory in the conventional manners or ways which basically comprises the use of spreadsheets. A number of manual labor work on these spreadsheets to control the inventory and ensure that everything is being managed properly. However, this automated feature organizes and controls the inventory in more systematized manner. Also, unlike the labor intensive method, the chances of any humanly like errors are nil in this mechanized feature which is good for the sovereignty of a business
Forecasting Of Demand
This feature is a must-have for all the retail stores or businesses in their Inventory Management System. What it does is that it forecasts all of the commodities which are sale and notifies which particular product is selling or being demanded by the consumers the most. It also informs about the possible groups of certain products that which size, color or flavor is getting the most share of the market so that the manager can make wiser decision in accordance with the information gathered. Hence, this will help him cater to the demand and buy more or maintain the inventory levels of those popular products.
These are some of the many key features which can be added or programmed in the system. As you can judge, these features helps businesses in inventory management on many levels.
The people in the upper hierarchies of a business can easily access the inventory numbers through channels like a laptop or a mobile device as its being continuously updated by the automated system. This keeps them updated.
The mechanized reordering system prevents the business to keep heaps of stock/inventory in the storage and thus, save the storage costs and also avoids the money being tied up in the stocks.
Efficiency of the business is also duly increased as automation, in most of the work associated with inventory, clearly speeds up the process and thus again, cuts business expenses.
In Pakistan, There are some major software developers who are providing this System such as Cyber Vision, Soft Care Group, The Next Rex Pvt Ltd and many more. However the Inventory Management System and POS by thethenextrex.pk is being held the best in the market with valuable features at an extremely affordable price.