Do you operate a warehouse which includes packing and shipping orders every day? Do you purchase and stock inventory from multiple vendors or sellers? If your answer is a yes to any of these questions, you need a proper SaaS based Warehouse Management Software.
Every single distribution business today requires at least some of the basic functionalities for managing inventory, warehouse operations ad customer details. Most business will have their own process to manage these activities however, there are certain essential and common features in the inventory management software that can support your business to automate the processes, eliminate human errors and reduce the operational time, further keeping your customer happy always.
The traditional way of managing and tracking inventory through spreadsheets result to human errors, over-sights, time consuming and frustrating. For growing businesses, they need a proper warehouse inventory management system which can act as a powerful tool unlike spreadsheets.
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Let us deep dive on some of the key features of an inventory management software, that every distribution business needs today:
1. Inventory Control
To start with the basics, inventory control functionality is a central part of the warehouse and distribution operations. In order words, this includes every job that is done at a warehouse like tracking, shipping, packing, delivering and storing goods at their desired locations. The ability of an inventory management system is that within a span of seconds, knowing what are the available inventories in your warehouse, which of them are in transit and how many have already been delivered. Furthermore, this will allow you to determine the stock level for your business based on the supply and demand of goods.
If you do not have proper control over holding the inventory, this can result in extra costs because of over supplies; or lose customer because of no supplies available. Also, if the warehouse is not organized well, your workforce would spend a lot of time finding and tracking items for delivery. Thus, with a SaaS based Inventory Management Solution you can control and optimise all of these at ease with just a smartphone that has internet connection.
2. Lot Tracking
Lot tracking is another very important feature from an inventory management system for companies that deal with consumable or hazardous products, especially those that has an expiration date. Here you can track the movement of your inventories, their expiration dates so that the operations are not hampered.
Instances when the supplier will inform you of defects, with the lot tracking system you can quickly identify which are the affected goods and if that still exists in the warehouse or already delivered to customer. In cases, when this is delivered to customer, you can quickly inform the customer and request for a recall. This will not just manage the operations smoothly, but help you win the hear of end customer.
3. Barcode Scanning
Sending the right product to the right customer is the basic and most important rule of business. Many a times it happens that you manage a large amount similar inventories because of the demand and only one of your customers has asked for a good with minor tweak. For example, you have 100 orders of black thermals with a zip lock and of which only one has requested without a zip lock. In such instances, you would not want to deliver the wrong item to your customer.
Barcode scanning, another feature from an inventory management system is an easy way to improve on your existing warehouse management operations. Scanning items are it is received and during delivery, not just eliminates the amount of error, but also reduces the time taken to track, schedule and deliver orders. Furthermore, guaranteeing that you deliver the right product to the right customer. Consider looking for a mobile handheld picking, which allows users to scan products through mobile phones, resulting in real-time stock updates.
4. Accounting
While you keep moving your stocks and filling your warehouse to meet the upcoming demand, managing the accounts is also important. You would not want to first manage the demands, off load all your inventories and then layback to calculate your accounts. Not only is this frustrating, but will result in a lot of errors which cannot be undone at that time.
The right cloud-based inventory management system will include solution for accounting your orders, purchases, invoices, tracking the cash in – cash out, and handling the complete financial operations of your warehouse business. A traditional way would be to note all transaction over a spreadsheet and later input them over to your accounting software. But the questions are, if everything can be done over one solution, why would you bother managing multiple?
5. Reporting & Analytics
For every business, reporting and analytics is a must-have, as it allows your business to make informed decisions. The readiness of information at the needed time helps is making decisions, negotiating rates with suppliers, attain more visibility and greater insight. Furthermore, you do not have to be dependent of someone to provide you with a day end or month end report. Simply log-in and access the information in your set or preferred dashboard.
If you are looking forward to expand your business or for a decent solution that can manage your warehouse inventories, the above listed features would be a great starting point. In conclusion, a cloud-based Inventory Management system would be the right solution for you, as this will also include advanced features which you may simply opt-in depending upon your business needs or industry requirements.
