Inventory Management technology is crucial to any SME’s who are into Supply Chain Management. This blog includes the challenges faced in Inventory management and the solution to these challenges.
Efficiently managing space is an intimidating task. Planning and designing warehouse spaces with inventory management platforms helps you better control the timing of new stock deliveries. It can account for important factors, such as available space. The efficiency of Inventory management directly impacts the customer satisfaction.
Retail is one of the most growing businesses where the focus is more into Warehouse Management and Inventory Controls. The importance of customer satisfaction falls into place when it comes to proper Inventory control. Also, in terms of business growth customer satisfaction plays an important role. Proper planning and designing of warehouse spaces with inventory management platforms helps you better control the timing of new stock deliveries.
Let us see about the challenges and the technology platforms which CodeValue offers you to manage and overcome these bottlenecks.
Inventory Variables Tracking
The most important aspect of an organization to have the right inventory at the right place at the right time. Material & Resource Planning is an adequate engine to monitor the requirements, below stock alerts with a minimum & maximum stock level. MRP plays an important role for the merchandisers / buyers to plan for the inventory at the retail store. The minimum & maximum quantities will be an important parameter to be monitored at individual SKU(Stock Keeping Unit) level and later on this has been changed to the category level with a weightage that can set the requirement metrics for the retail store.
This depends upon the sales history, demand management of the items at the category level and Warehouse processes in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management recommends the inventory levels at various locations. In case of a requirement based on these parameters at a retail store arises, then the Dynamics 365 SCM warehouse management tool proposes to transfer the materials from the centralized warehouse and in turn this will also create a demand at the central warehouse which in turn recommends the merchandisers / buyers to procure from the market. This highly effective tool which takes care of the demand / requirements across the organization and suggests the right transfers / procurement at the right time where the procurement management systems are maintained and processed by our CVT expert team.
Warehouse Efficiency
Measure and report warehouse performance metrics—such as inventory turnover, customer satisfaction and order processing speed—to improve warehouse inefficiencies.
Every retailer would like to have enough inventory to cater their customers having said that it is also essential for them not to overstock any inventory as it can become obsolete very quickly with the fast-changing demands. Inventory turnover is a financial ratio showing how many times a company has sold and replaced inventory during a given period.
Inventory Turnover analysis using D365 will help the retailers to understand the performance of the SKU’s and depending upon the demand & sales, it is essential that the same is being maintained in the warehouse at the appropriate location so that this can be picked and dispatched as early as possible. Warehouse efficiency does depend on the inventory and the picking rate at which this can be catered to any customer / retail store.
Dashboards and statistics of an item that is in-built with Power BI for our customers does help them to organize the inventory in the right place with the right levels which increases the efficiency of the warehouse as well the as the inventory levels.
Inaccurate Data
Data is vital for all the organization and it is more vital for Retail. As the stock levels in the system should match with the physical stock at the retail store. This tends to be in discrepancy for most of the times due to the nature of the business itself, hence counting becomes important and based on the planned stock counting based on the value of the item, sales speed of the item, the Dynamics 365 SCM which provides options for the inventory controllers to group the stock counting, so that the effort spent on counting the stock is distributed and the frequency will not hamper the retail store staffs in such a way they end up counting all the inventory of the retail store at least once in a defined period.
Based on the stock counting, the necessary adjustments in the system is passed on automatically, this makes the data close to accurate, as this plays a major factor to be considered in the MRP run to ensure the proper inventory levels are maintained I.e., not too low nor too high.
Inventory Visibility
At any given point of time the merchandise / buyer / inventory controller should be knowing what is available in inventory across the organization I.e., retail stores, warehouses, in transit inwards and in transit purchases etc., A centralized system which can operate online always and integrates with all the transactions related to the inventory such as Purchase, Sales, Transfers, Counting Adjustments, Damage, Scrap etc., is very much essential, as Retail is not only an art to sell to the demand, but also to push the inventory into the market which is holding back at the warehouse and other scenario is also like to push the stocks that gives more margin and competitive enough in the market. All these are possible using a robust ERP system Dynamics 365 with built-in Retail & POS capabilities.
Inadequate Software
Adopt our integrated, cloud-based inventory management platform and leverage vendor expertise and training services at implementation.
Do you need expert advice for digitizing your Inventory Management Contact us at contact@codevalue.in and follow us @codevaluetechnologies.