Title: 3 Inventory Management Best Practices to Follow in 2019
13 Inventory Management Best Practices to Follow
in 2019
You go out to buy a pair of black heels the night
before you need them because your old pair is in
unwearable conditions. But none of the stores
has what you want, until, the absolute last store
that you get to. But... they are not in your
size. The store has failed you as a customer. To
the business owners that are reading this, I
would say, please step up and manage your
inventory better so that you never fail your
customer like this. Whether you are a store that
sells their products offline or online, the
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2- products are physical products that your
customers want. So, whether you display it
online or offline is irrelevant to the fact that
you need to have the products in stock. - This is where Magento inventory management comes
in. - The primary goal of it is to have all the
products that you sell, in stock. But of course,
that isnt all. Since there are plenty of people
buying everything online, lets focus on web
stores for this article. When you are an
e-commerce store, everything is on a computer,
except for the actual products that you sell. - So, let's talk about that one thing that is not
all about buttons and clicks. Inventory. How
should you handle it? - FIFO
- First in, first out signifies exactly what those
words say. You should sell older products before
the newer ones. This applies to obvious
perishable goods like food or medicines, but it
also applies to hygiene products, cleaning
products, cosmetics, as well as electronics. All
of these items fall under the umbrella term of
depreciating value. - Automated Ordering
- Certain products are in constant demand like
soaps, headache medicine, butter, basic
earphones, etc. You should always have these in
stock. An easy way to make sure that you always
have these is to automate the ordering process.
Set a baseline, so that if the stock falls below
it, the system will order more units.
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3- Predictive Ordering
- Keep track of market trends. People take a fancy
to new products very often. One day a product
could be doing so great that they cant make
enough of it, and the other, it will have no
demand in the market! So yes, you should always
have the products that are doing well in the
market, but you should be aware of how they could
become irrelevant at any time and therefore not
have too many of them. In such scenarios,
predictive ordering comes in the play. By
studying market trends, you get to understand the
market demands and hence keep the inventory
accordingly. - Sounds daunting, I know. But since its the 21st
century, there are apps for that! If your
e-commerce store uses the Magento platform, then
there are extensions and apps for inventory
management. An Inventory Management Magento
extension can take care of a lot of things for
you, after the initial setup. What are the
features you should look for when investing in an
Inventory Management Magento extension? Let's
talk a look - All in one view
- You should be able to see all your stocks,
warehouse details, supplier details, in one
place. Apart from this, you should also be able
to track your inventory from within the
extension. - Real-time updates
- The best way to take care of everything is, of
course, to have real-time updates. As soon as
your warehouse ships something to a retail
store, you should get a notification. This should
also show you
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4- how many units of the product are available now.
This way, you will never run out of stock and it
will not affect your supply chain. - Multiple Warehouse Management
- A large e-commerce store that delivers across the
country or across the world should have more
than one warehouse. You should be able to access
and manage all of your warehouses with this
extension. A detailed overview of all of your
warehouses makes it easier for you to order more
supplies when needed. - Supplier Management
- The Magento inventory management extension should
also be able to manage your suppliers. After
all, they are the ones who fulfill your
inventory demand, so it makes sense to have one
tool that takes care of inventory and gives the
required access to suppliers as well. The
suppliers should have their own access area where
they can see the purchase orders, add new
products, edit their own details, etc. - Detailed Inventory Log
- An Magento Inventory Management should be able to
give you a detailed log of the entire inventory
across all of your warehouses. You should be
able to see the activity logs for sales orders,
warehouses/suppliers added, inventory updates,
etc. - Inventory management of a Magento store can be
simple if you choose the right extension. Make
sure to look for the features that assist you and
make
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5the task simpler. Be sure to manage your
inventory in a way that you never fail your
customer! Summary Managing a large store is
difficult but managing the inventory should not
be. Read this article about inventory management
practices to make your task simpler, and yes,
technology can definitely help! Author Maulik
Shah is the Founder and CEO of AppJetty, a fast
growing software add-on store selling Magento
extensions and plugins for various technologies,
including. Magento Inventory Management Maulik is
a tech enthusiast and writes about the various
aspects of ecommerce technology.
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