These powerful features can automate your inventory management system, and save you bucks!

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The enterprise atmosphere is packed with projects, processes, and so many other things at stake.

In the modern age, every aspect of management relies heavily on information to succeed. Nothing moves without information, and thus, every resource needs to be organized.

In today’s highly competitive, fast-paced business environment, having an automated management system will lead to better planning, better decision-making and better results.

An automated inventory management system helps enterprises to manage stock wastage, optimize inventory levels, and get real-time inventory updates.

Optimizing inventory by going digital drives greater accuracy and efficiency for ecommerce operations and retail stores.

That’s where an automated inventory management system comes in.

How does an automated inventory management system work?

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Inventory management systems are transforming modern industry extremely. Meili Robots proves this fact by stating 70% of order fulfillment operations and warehouses- especially retail and wholesale industries — are done through AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) and other robotic solutions that result into the company’s overall efficiency and productivity.

Automated inventory management system helps to manage inventory in the real-time that results in the reduction of number of errors compared to manual systems, and optimizes the time spent on managing inventory.

Companies are deploying automated inventory management systems to avoid labor-intensive processes that include counting, aggregating, and calculating data at every step manually. Manual inventory management relies on people’s ability, and therefore, it hardly provides a complete picture of a company’s inventory in real-time.

Automated inventory management systems are a game-changer for every modern business regardless of size and type, and here’s why!

The iGeeks Blog also defines stock management as “one of the primary aspects” among the modern.

An automated inventory management system tracks and manages stocks, supplies, and sales automatically. This automated system streamlines supply chain management and allows businesses to connect with their in-store and online retail channels under one roof.

Automated inventory management gives insights on 100% real-time inventory exposure across all sale channels that help enterprises to sync orders as a result, increase in chances of sales and decrease in order canceling due to overbooking.

Integrated with point-of-sale (POS) software and other management tools, an automated inventory system performs a variety of vital business operations, including cash-flow forecasts, risk management, projected profit margins, etc.

Automated Inventory System uses RFIDs or barcodes to scan the products which consumers are purchasing. The information is then transmitted to the computer by reading barcodes and sending it to the software as well. The numbers from the bar code are interpreted by the software and match those numbers to the type of merchandise they represent. As a result, the merchant can easily track inventory and sales with a hand-held scanner or at the checkout counter.

In addition, automated inventory systems perform operations like:

  • Automate stock counting
  • Processing and shipment of orders
  • Streamlines warehouse operations
  • Unified product catalog

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Breaking down the automation features of an inventory management system

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In theory, “Automation” has a straightforward definition. However, it is important to understand why and how these automation features of the inventory management system would be the clear choice for your business. An inventory management system has distinctive features. However, there are some standard features that should be automated to gain maximum benefits.

Having the right inventory management system with these tech features, businesses can flex and adapt with ease regarding business models and market challenges. Here’s the list of features to checkout to expand your business and its reach.

  • Automatic reordering
  • Alerts
  • Barcoding
  • Analytics
  • Reports

Here’s what to expect from those above-listed features:

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1. Automatic Reordering

Automated reordering is an automated system in the inventory management system that notifies when stock-on-hand reaches a predetermined reorder point through notifications, custom par levels, and supplier relationships management.

An automated inventory management system lets retailers, as well as wholesalers, manage their inventory in real-time. It simplifies the workflows, saves time and money. Since an automated inventory management system conducts all the tasks on its own with pre-built conditions, it gives you the chance to focus better on other tasks.

Inventory management systems do more than just stock tracking for businesses.

But what if at times, businesses are forced to do a crucial and important task when demand changes rapidly?

From managing large order quantities to long lead-times and complex supply chains, it will be difficult for businesses to respond agilely.
During such times, some important questions are important to think of, like:

  • How can an organization avoid running out of stock of the product?
  • What is the value an organization derives from this automated feature?
  • How does this feature help to avoid excessive purchase or storage of a product?
  • If this feature exists in an inventory management system, how would it compete without any assistance?

Retail operating systems use the most powerful automation engines to optimize the whole inventory and distribution process. Businesses can enhance the routine efforts to automate everything from drop shipping, to backorders, order invoicing, partial fulfillment, inventory counts, and customer tagging, which is challenging in a manual process.

The traditional process of managing inventory is a labor-intensive process, as businesses have to deal with the burden of accessing documents and manual counting. Manual process also leads to unnecessary expenses due to over-ordering and sometimes, shortages of items result in business loss. The automated reordering facility in the inventory management system helps everyone who has geared up for using this system efficiently. Automatic reordering can help with:

  • Streamline tedious task
  • Give you a competitive advantage
  • Save time and money
  • Enhance customer satisfaction
  • Minimize the chance of wrong entry

Automated inventory systems can also focus on updating their inventory records through digital barcoding and RFID (Radio-frequency identification) tags to reduce the risk of having errors and streamline the process of tracking stock and improve accuracy of inventory quantities.

Effective inventory automation must work in conjunction with other retail management tools like your order management and the point-of-sale software. It provides notification to merchants about the right volume of stock available on the shelves.

For example, Coca Cola, a carbonated soft drink manufacturer, is having a fully automated warehouse to manage inventory of all its products for the EMEA region.

 

2. Alerts

As a business owner, it becomes tedious to spend a lot of valuable time in monitoring inventory stock details manually. It consumes a lot of your precious time and keep you away from spending time on improving your business.

Do you know businesses lose $1.75 Trillion per year to out-of-stocks, overstocks, and returns? As per the report by IHL Group, “out-of-stocks” accounted for $634.1 billion in lost retail sales. As operations become complex, managing everything in-store and online becomes more difficult for businesses.

This is where inventory alerts come in handy for business owners, especially those involved in retail businesses.

Also referred to as Inventory Alerts, Alerts notifies you when there has been a significant change in your level of inventory. Usually, businesses set alerts for low-stock alerts; however, alerts can be set on the nature of retail operations, products, and business. There are many types of inventory alerts, like:

  • New shipments
  • Slow-moving stock
  • Bulk or large orders
  • Inventory reorder point
  • Identification of negative allocations
  • Updated product shelf life
  • Uncategorized products
  • Products about to get expired
  • Goods that need to be reordered
  • Goods awaiting parts
  • Total products in stock

With such a feature, business owners can easily predict the possible issues, to take necessary action on time and tackle the problem effectively.

An automated inventory management system will directly send alert messages via emails or SMS covering all details including shipment details, product transits, incoming stock, outgoing stocks, and so on. For running a successful business such reliable inventory alerts can help you stay ahead in the game. This automated and organized system with inventory alerts can help business owners in many ways like:

  • Reducing stock wastage
  • Optimizing stock levels
  • Increasing the visibility of stock across the department,
  • Driving sales
  • Maintain operational control

Businesses can enjoy the commercial benefits of automating inventory alerts by:

  • Synchronizing data through drag-and-drop graphical user interface
  • Automating business notifications & business processes
  • Removing complex programming to get flexible system integration

 

3. Barcoding

Barcode-based inventory management includes software and hardware to track inventory using barcodes to categorize and identify items.

Barcoding is one of the most important features of the inventory management system. Barcode scanning and radio-frequency identification systems are the main tools to cater to enhanced inventory management solutions.

What could be better than recording product details with just a simple scan?

From tracking price to product details, this feature helps to enhance inventory control and enable us to perform tasks without prompting. As scanning barcodes deliver a more reliable solution than manual entry, it reduces employee training time on how to record product details.

Automated inventory management with digital barcoding and RFID tags will offer outstanding assistance to business leaders in achieving excellent improvement.

Inventory tracking with barcodes is possible from location-to-location by automating the entire workflow to streamline the fulfillment process. Barcode-based workflows count a stock as accurately as possible resulting in less human errors and/or easier to find and fix blunders.

Did you know Intel reports 5% inventory inaccuracy due to manual processing? Intel’s RFID sensor platform reported an increase in warehouse visibility by showing which goods are available for delivery. Besides, it also smoothens the return-flow warehouse processes by tracking goods.

The digital barcode scanning feature of the inventory management system helps business leaders to reduce the possibilities of standard human error during data accumulations. Also, when compared with manual data entry, barcode scanning is pretty fast and highly reliable. In addition, the learning curve for employees to adopt barcoding or tagging will be much easier than the traditional process.

This feature provides more control to the business owners on managing inventory. The inventory management system with this feature simplifies the process involved in stock tracking and tracking products based on their details & prices. Here are some benefits you can get from this feature:

  • Faster performance
  • Scan barcode with ease
  • Get precise products details
  • Records things faster compared to the workforce
  • Barcode and tagging
  • Search products

 

4. Analytics

Business enhancement in today’s modern business world is a tedious task, especially if you are unsure about what and when to implement advanced strategies for your business improvement. Before that, to enhance and improve your business process you need to be aware of what exactly the business is doing and where it stands in the market.

Do you know 43% of SMBs don’t track their inventory despite it becoming more accessible for them? To get such a clear picture, you need to monitor your business performance. And should collect and analyze your business data from various departments in a centralized location also known as inventory.

And so, warehouse inventory management might be able to be convinced in creating various inventory reports, including inventory variance reports, turnover reports, location reports, low inventory reports, and so on.

These system-generated reports enable business to keep their eyes on sales revenue, reordering strategies and also identify inconsistencies by product and location.

The inventory analytics feature of a good inventory management system helps business owners to monitor important customer data and forecast their ideal inventory stock level accordingly.

With such effective forecasting through inventory analytics, business leaders can utilize the resources wisely and act better in ordering purchase quantities.

Therefore, overall, the inventory analytics feature can help business owners understand, plan and implement important decisions for the business. Here’s what you get from this feature:

  • Result-oriented business insights
  • Inventory forecasting
  • Automated tracking order and shipment status
  • Increase turnover rates
  • Align marketing and sales efforts
  • Track production efficiency metrics

 

5. Reports

In today’s business world, automated reporting is one of the most important features of the inventory management system. A good inventory management system offers custom reports for any location(s) that helps the users to halt complicated data quickly.

According to Statista, in 2020, there were some products in high demand while some were in less demand. Concerning the business, the value of out-of-stock products reached to 1,140 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, which was ultimately considered as a loss for the business.

Businesses are facing overstocking and understocking issues the most. And, that can easily be solved through reports. Inventory reports are important for businesses as it provides real-time information to them that is helpful for making informed business decisions.

The presence of a reporting tool in the inventory management system provides real-time data updates regarding various business operations involved in stock handling including product status, drive information, status regarding the order, product shipment details and more that helps to make more informed decisions about all the business activities.

The modern inventory system comes with excellent features including the integration capability of various third-party reporting tools. This makes the reporting process much easier with high flexibility.

Having a flexible reporting tool with an inventory system is crucial for all hardcore businesses involved in the retail business. It provides smooth communication, improves productivity, increases sales up to 10%, reduces common human error, and many more.
Let’s explore some benefits of automated reports for businesses:

  • Help in long-term planning
  • Increase business sales
  • Set clear objectives for businesses
  • Minimize stock issues

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How can an automated inventory management system create an impact in the new era?

Running a successful retail business relies on having a reliable inventory process that tracks a company’s inventory and sales. Businesses reap a 30% improvement in stock and a 25% increase in productivity using an automated inventory tracking system, suggested East Point.

A few benefits offered by an automated inventory system and here’s how they help businesses.

Improve Product Visibility in Recalls:

Automated inventory systems help to remove manual data entry by digitizing everything that enters or leaves the premises. As a result, the visibility of product recalls improves and can save some bucks in the long run.

Accuracy With Automation:

Automation brings accuracy and reduces the chances of human errors. An efficient inventory management system lets businesses control everything with ease. And thus, it could reduce potential loss of sales that could happen due to manual inventory systems.

Reduced Overhead Costs:

Cost tracking is one of the important aspects to run a business successfully. But, how can enterprises minimize overhead costs? The answer to this is through an automated inventory management system. It offers complete traceability to businesses through inventory reports so they can easily identify slow-moving products to make a decision about whether or not they are useful to store. In addition, it minimizes the chances of losing or misplacing any product.

Increased Efficiency and Productivity:

Automated inventory management systems increase efficiency, too. It keeps track of everything and saves-up time for managers to carry out other activities. Using OCR, it automates inventory tracking systems to capture information precisely mentioned on the label.

Greater Visibility with Real-Time Data:

Looking for updated information immediately? An automated inventory management system stores everything, from accounting to inventory reports, promotions, and many more to provide real-time, data-driven insights with just a click.

It’s time to invest in an automated inventory management system

Outside of those scenarios, proper use of automated inventory management features need not be rocket science.

The advantages and how-to presented in this blog should give you clear steps for:

  • Understanding why enterprises should go for automated inventory systems
  • Identifying how and who might benefit from automated inventory systems
  • Tracking everything within enterprises for business growth becomes easy

In general, understand how to utilize an automated inventory management system to add value to your business with accurate and real-time data, and then present that value desirably and captivatingly.

More About Author

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Vishal Nakum

Vishal Nakum is a tech enthusiast with a passion for exploring the latest developments in the world of technology. He has a keen interest in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Blockchain, and enjoys keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in these fields. Vishal is an avid learner and is always on the lookout for new ways to expand his knowledge and skills. He is also a creative thinker and enjoys experimenting with new ideas and concepts. In his free time, Vishal enjoys playing video games and reading books on technology and science.