Four Best Practices for Successful Inventory Management
When you optimize your inventory management best practices strategy, you enjoy a business that spends just the right amount of time, money, and energy on inventory. Supervising the flow of products from the manufacturer to your warehouse to the point of sale is no easy task, but it’s critical for the performance and long-term profitability of a business. If you’re curious about how to improve your inventory management, consider whether you’re currently engaging in these four inventory management best practices.
Get Organized
The organization of your warehouse can determine how quickly you fulfill orders, how well you keep up with consumer demands, and how happy you keep customers. Customer retention depends on being able to provide the products and services they request in a timely manner. Shirking inventory systematization can impede your ability to fulfill this obligation. Staying organized, on the other hand, can enable your employees to quickly find items and send them to points of sale without issue or delay. Here are a few tips on keeping your inventory organized:
- Come up with logical names for areas in your storage room.
- Label all your storage locations, not just areas that currently hold stock.
- Make labels clear and easy to read.
- Train employees and new hires how to navigate the warehouse.
- Create detailed and unique item descriptions for everything in storage.
- Number items to identify and track them.
- Use consistent units of measure to quantify stock levels and record these units somewhere clearly.
- Load data into an inventory software program to keep track of items easily.
Analyze the performance of your current organizational system and ask your employees for their input. Look for any areas of your warehouse that need improvement, and clear up confusing location names and implement better labeling systems. Small changes can make a major difference in how quickly and efficiently your team can fulfill customer orders. In turn, fast order fulfillment leads to satisfied, loyal customers. Investing in your warehouse’s organization is really an investment in your company’s success.
Educate Your Team
Your inventory managers, employers, loading bay team, and everyone else involved in the inventory and stock processes must all be on the same page. The people who handle your stock and use your system are the most important part of establishing an efficient inventory management strategy. Everyone involved should know exactly what to do when receiving items, storing them, and sending them to points of sale. You must train your entire staff to understand and use your chosen software and organizational systems. Be open to answering questions and clearing up harmful miscommunications.
Control the Quality of Your Goods
A major drain on your inventory budget can go toward broken, damaged, or leaking items in your warehouse. You can help remedy this by providing your employees with specific procedures, checklists, and/or software systems that can help them follow proper procedures when unloading and checking goods they receive from manufacturers. Warehouse employees should know how to check product quality and flag issues before you accept them and must pay for damages your team didn’t cause.
Use the Right Management Systems
Modern software significantly improves the way businesses manage inventory. From data analysis to setting up automatic orders based on your specific needs, the right software solution can make inventory control precise, efficient, and reliable. If you’re unsure which software is right for your company, use our Discovery Tool to find out. Our team will send you recommendations for software based on your particular needs. A tailored inventory management solution can clean up areas of inventory that are lacking, implement smart strategies for improvement, and guarantee the long-term success of your management system. Find your ideal solution today.
