Inventory management can be a tricky ordeal, especially if you are selling on multiple sales channels such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, and others. You have to monitor incoming orders on all of your platforms, make sure that you have enough stock to fulfill those orders, and finally modify the stock levels after dispatching those orders. Such a task can be quite demanding and can be subject to human error. This can lead to you overselling or underselling certain products, hurting your business.
If you own an eCommerce business, you should definitely start thinking about investing in an inventory management tool or system. Even though such a tool can help businesses save time and money, many businesses rely on spreadsheets instead of a dedicated application to manage their inventory. Inventory management should help you understand and know your customers better and thus improving your ability to convert sales towards them. It should also allow you to analyze your stock from a lot of different perspectives, such as how quickly a product gets sold and how long it sits in a warehouse.
What are the main features that you should be looking for in inventory management software?
Platform connectivity
This is a major feature to consider, not just for the present, but also for the future. An inventory management tool should be able to connect to the selling platforms that you use on a daily basis and offer the options to connect to additional platforms in the future.
The more platforms you can connect, the easier it is for you to manage your inventory. Connecting all of your sales channels to inventory management software allows you to have a better overview of how products are selling, this can be helpful when you’re working on demand forecasting.
Easy to use interface
Another important factor that you need to consider when choosing an inventory management system is the software interface. Consider how technically savvy you are and where your employees are on a technical scale. If it will take your staff hours and hours to learn the basic operational procedures and inventory controls it’s probably not worth your time. Every time you hire a new employee, you’re going to have to spend hours training each and every one of them.
As a business owner, if you find yourself struggling to navigate the system’s interface, you may want to consider a solution that is more user-friendly. Would you buy a car with a manual transmission if you didn’t know how to drive a stick shift? Probably not. But if you did, you would have to take out the time to learn.
The same thing applies to inventory management software, if the learning curve is too high for you and your employees, it’s going to cost you a lot of time, energy, and money that could hurt your business in the long run.
Multiple location support
Inventory management is hard, but it’s even harder when you own multiple warehouses scattered across the country. If you have multiple warehouses or plan on having new warehouses in different locations, you’ll want one centralized tool to help manage inventory. Make sure the solution you invest in can support your potentially expanding business.
Support and training
You should never overlook the importance of having access to quality customer support. The last thing you want to happen after you buy new software is to be left out in the cold to figure out how to use it. Unless you’re super confident in your ability to figure it all out by yourself, make sure that the software provider offers you quality support, or else you might find yourself wasting time trying to figure out some basic functionalities.
Final thoughts
Managing your inventory well is a sure way to improving your ability to save shelf-space, warehouse space, and showroom floor space, in case your small or medium business is equipped with one. Businesses of all sizes can save a lot of time and money on essential tasks such as locating stock, resolving shipment issues, or handling logistics administration if they invest in a proper inventory management tool.
Keep these in mind when looking for your inventory management solution and don’t be afraid to invest in it. You will surely feel the advantages in the long run, as your business will be way better organized and your profit will be easily scalable.
Take Nventree for example, it helps you manage your stocks, products, and orders across multiple platforms, such as eBay, Amazon, and your shopping cart from one easy-to-use interface, instead of having to log into each channel separately. Comparing this to a spreadsheet inventory is like comparing a rock to a skyscraper.
You can also use it to export orders, products, or reports to CSV spreadsheets, it also allows you to map shipping services per each channel requirements, lets you dispatch and refund all your orders with one click, and also lets you print invoices and labels.
Feel free to contact us by phone at 0121 285 1050 or go to our Live Chat in order to talk to one of our operators anytime from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm UK time. You can also open a ticket on our HelpDesk system for any issues that may arise outside working hours.