Strategies To Address Inventory Management Challenges
Effective inventory management is an essential factor in your ability to grow your business, regardless of your industry or business activity. Just as participation in the digital economy is no longer a choice, it’s essential to your future competitiveness, growth and viability.
This isn’t about pivoting your business to online retail, but about your ability to automate your business processes and integrate information, like sensor data generated by IIoT devices, into your core business systems, so that your team can achieve more with their time and respond faster to changes in your business or industry, all the while carrying less stock and reducing stock wastage.
Small and mid-size businesses across Australia that continue to resist digital technology will widen the gap between their industries largest players and themselves, falling further behind competitors and reducing their capacity for resiliency as market challenges arise.
If you’re one of those organisations that have put off the switch to an effective, integrated ERP system, here’s our guide to the many ways in which undergoing a digital transformation will help your business thrive.
How Effective Digital Strategies Can Improve Your Inventory Management
As with anything in business, a strategic, thoughtful approach to improve your inventory management is better. All digital technology is not created equal, so it’s essential to look at potential applications with an eye on future technologies and your future growth. Here’s what that looks like in the real world:
1 Drive Efficiency, Drive Growth
Technology can be an incredible driver of efficiency. And the more efficient your business, the better placed you are to take on new customers and set yourself up for long-term growth.
Tech can drive this efficiency by streamlining or automating many of the tedious, repetitive administrative tasks that take up staff time. Technology enables you to selectively automate business processes such as invoicing, billing, sourcing crucial data and manually double- checking figures. It also enables you to automatically generate reports, compile sales figures and manage inventory. This means your people can focus on growth-centered work.
2 Automate Inventory Management Processes
This isn’t about replacing your people with machines, it’s about installing a sensor that sends a signal to your systems that specific inventory items need replenishing, and your system automating the replenishment process in the back office. It’s also about automating other back office processes that are prone to human error, overly time consuming and complex, or simply shouldn’t require human involvement.
Automation improves efficiency and while often improving employee happiness in the workplace. (Learn more about Business Automation)
3 Connect and Collaborate
Connected, collaborative teams are more productive and engaged – that alone is a good reason to use tech to improve business communication. Connected teams keep information flowing around your business, streamlining workflows and unplugging bottlenecks. Issues are resolved faster because everyone has access to the same information at the same time.
4 More Leads, More Business
If you use a robust ERP system like MYOB Acumatica, accurate, up-to-the-minute data is always a given. With all your customer data at your fingertips, you can reach out to customers easily, answer questions quickly, tailor marketing communication to certain subsets and follow up on leads. You can also tailor marketing campaigns around Inventory on hand, again improving your inventory management capability.
5 Compliance, Compliance, Compliance
A lot of time is spent on Compliance, in many industries, however it’s not something you can compromise on or take short-cuts with. If compliance isn’t managed properly it can cost you customers as well as create headaches with regulatory bodies. In a worst-case scenario, non-compliance can result in product recalls, or business closure.
With an effective ERP system in place, there’s no need to spend hours compiling and cross-checking compliance documents. All the information you need is available in seconds – and your compliance issues minimised.
6 Visibility and Insight
The more you know, the better you do. In business, this means visibility is everything. If you can use software to see everything that’s happening, check the numbers whenever you need to and create instant reports, you’ll be able to make better decisions and flag issues before minor issues become major problems.
7 Minimise Spending
Many businesses resist implementing new technology because of the perceived cost. In reality, choosing to invest in the right software – like a fully-integrated business management system like MYOB Acumatica – can reduce spending on technology over time.
This is because a well-designed system can replace a host of other siloed applications – eliminating those costs and boosting your businesses productivity at the same time.
Taking That Strategic Step Towards Improved Inventory Management
Right now the challenges your business is facing are huge, changing customer expectations, fierce competition and economic changes are just some, but the best way to managing those challenges requires a strategic, tech-centered approach.
Digitisation of your business is the most effective way to improve your inventory management. If you’re unsure where the best place to start is, our very experienced team can provide practical, impartial advice around both the systems to get you started and best practice business processes to ensure your operations and procedures are optimised for maximum efficiency and growth.
