One of the most important responsibilities that manufacturers and retailers need to meet is stock availability. Consumers should be able to find the product being offered when they need it. Otherwise, it will reflect poor supply chain management and may result in customer dissatisfaction and eventually profit loss. Stock unavailability must be avoided. This article shares warehouse inventory management tips that you need to know.
What is Stock Availability and Why it Matters
Stock availability is an essential part of your operations. It is key to ensure that your inventory meets customer demand. By ensuring that stocks are available you can efficiently use your time, lower costs, and increase profit.
Stock Availability Made Easy with Simple Warehouse Inventory Management Tips
1. Implement Inventory Management
An inventory management system is essential especially if you have multiple warehouses. With this in place, it will be easier to ensure visibility, gather and secure data, and do real-time tracking of stock.
An inventory management system will allow you to:
- Prevent time-consuming inventory tasks
- Reduce human error
- Ensure stock availability
2. Forecast the Demand
Having an accurate overview of the consumer demand trend will ensure that stocks will be available according to the needs of the consumers. You need to look into past trends to know what stocks will be highly demanded at a certain time. It will help you determine when it’s time to reorder or replenish stocks. It will also guide you in making smart and timely decisions that will keep your operations running smoothly.
TIP: Flash sales and other promotions are some of the strategies usually done to deplete old stocks in a short period of time and make room for new ones.
3. Optimize Inventory Distribution
Using multiple warehouses to distribute your inventory may pose a challenge when tracking the availability of stocks. However, this should not be a problem with an optimized inventory distribution. With this in place, you will be able to:
- Establish access to real-time inventory data as this will allow you to meet demands by storing a sufficient amount of SKUs in a particular location.
- Provide fast, reliable, and affordable shipping to your customers.
- Ensure order fulfillment even with bad weather or unexpected scenarios that make causes warehouse closure.
4. Perform Inventory Audits
It is important to ensure the accuracy of the system matches and actual inventory. This can be done through regular inventory audits. Through this process, it will be easier to identify inefficiencies. You will be able to point out poor performing products, as well as the fast sellers so you’ll know which products must be made available as well as the ones that may need to be pulled out or cease distribution because of decreased demand.
5. Work with Reliable Partners
The businesses you work with play a crucial role in helping your business thrive. Your suppliers who make available the materials you need at an agreed time, as well as the logistics company that helps optimize your supply chain operations, are among the key players that can eliminate problems with stock availability. Maintain a good relationship with them so you can be sure that you’ll have the support you need in managing your business.
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There are drawbacks that you may encounter if you’ll fail to ensure stock availability. Higher operational costs that lead to profit loss is one of the problems that it may lead to. Fortunately, there are ways to improve your processes to make it easier for you to meet the demands of your customers.
Overcome problems with your supply chain by partnering with a trusted logistics company. Worklink Services Incorporated has been partnering with businesses from various industries to meet expectations and help them with their operations. Contact us now so we can discuss your needs.