What to Look for When Choosing an Inventory Management System

Posted by Samantha Mary Jones on December 8th, 2021

Choosing the right inventory management software is an important step in increasing your business’s operational efficiency. With a proper system in place, you can easily keep track of your inventory and make timely decisions to replenish it.

This tool is essential for coordination between all the stakeholders of your business operations and ensures that you never have to return a customer empty-handed. It’s also a great way of acquiring data and using it for deep analysis to improve your operations. With more data, you can do accurate forecasting and use the projections to your advantage.

When switching to an inventory management system, make sure to find the right one for your company. Here are all the things you should look out for if you want to get a system that works smoothly and help you achieve operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Improved Inventory Control through Forecasting and Projections

Excess stock and stock-out are both equally bad for the company. Excess stock means you used the company’s resources that could’ve been saved for future cycles, and stock-out means losing out on potential customers. Both these problems can largely be controlled through proper inventory forecasting.

The right inventory management software records historical data and helps make projections for the business. When finding the perfect system for your company, make sure to get one that improves your inventory control.

The forecasting is done using the constant inflow of data. As a result, you can study all your products and their SKUs and pick up on different trends. You can also understand the demand of each product and make sure that your supply meets it. 

Actionable Data Dashboards

A good inventory management system provides you with data that can easily be converted to actionable dashboards. These dashboards can help you identify seasonal trends, popular products, areas of weakness, and other important aspects of your business operations.

As a result, you can devise strategies that work better for your business in the future. It can also help your business reach efficiencies and become more profitable.

Barcode Scanning

Your inventory management system needs to allow barcode scanning. This will help you record the inventory as soon as it gets moved rather than manually entering each record.

With proper barcode scanning, your system will have the latest Point of Sale (POS) information that will allow you to make timely decisions.

Easy Configuration

If you have different operations under one business, it’ll benefit you to buy a system that’s easy to configure. This essentially means that you can configure and optimize the same software for different facets of your operation and achieve overall efficiency.

It’ll also lower the cost of making the transition from a traditional inventory management system to an automated real-time inventory management system. This is because you can use the same software for all your business needs.

User-Friendly Interface

Since many different stakeholders of your business will be using the inventory management system, you must ensure a user-friendly interface. If your employees find navigating the software and using it properly, you may face operational difficulties.

An easy-to-navigate software will encourage your stakeholders to use it in place of traditional, tedious systems. It’ll also help you keep better track of your business’s daily activities and make timely decisions.

Cloud-Based/Software as a Service

Cloud-based services are cheaper than on-premise inventory management systems. This is large because the price of the former is based on the number of subscriptions and the people who use the software.  However, the latter requires an upfront fee that is to be paid to get the system running.

In addition to this, a cloud-based inventory management system also makes it easier to work through contingencies and problems that may arise. The biggest advantage of using this is that it allows easy data retrieval in case of malware attack, hacking, and any other unforeseen troubles.

Setting up and getting the system running is significantly shorter for cloud-based systems than on-premise ones. They have better configuration tools that allow them to be up and running with minimal effort from your IT team.

Get the Best Inventory Management Software for Your Business

With reliable and high-quality inventory management software, you can achieve efficiency for your manufacturing business. Are you looking for a cloud-based inventory management system? Check out AltheaSuite and make the shift today. We have the best inventory management software for the manufacturing industry that allows batch tracking and barcode scanning.

Our team is adept at developing inventory system software for small business, furniture retailers, distribution businesses, and more clients. Visit our website to learn more about our services or get in touch with us for further information. You can also book a demo or get a free trial of our inventory management software for your business.

About the author

Samantha Jones is a software designer who’s been in the field for more than a decade and is currently working at AltheaSuite.

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