If you are struggling to keep oversight of your inventory, you are not alone. A recent survey showed that 43% of business owners either do not track their inventory, or use a time-consuming manual system. Yet, stock control is essential to the survival of businesses, so having a reliable stock management system is vital. In this article, we outline the main benefits to businesses of implementing a stock management system.
What is Stock Control?
Stock control, or inventory control, is the process of managing or overseeing the stock that an organisation currently has control of. This can include physical ownership of the products, as well as stock that is on order, in transit, or sold.
Stock control is also knowing every product acquired by an organisation, as well as details such as product values, stock turnover rates, product expiry dates, and more.
What is a Stock Management System?
A stock management system is a system or a process that manages stock, including the processes of ordering, storing, tracking, and controlling inventory. This is sometimes referred to as an inventory management system.
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What are the benefits of implementing a stock management system?
- Improved business efficiency
With an automated stock management system managing your stock effectively, you can spend less time manually inputting data — and fixing potentially costly mistakes. Reliable stock management systems, like StockAssist, connect and interact with other business areas — providing you with real-time accurate data. With total visibility over your stock levels, and having key knowledge to hand such as the exact locations of products, you can be more efficient, productive, and profitable, ensuring you have improved resource management across the entire business.
According to a survey conducted by GetData, 55% of small businesses owners polled say that inventory management software saves them more than 5 hours each week. This can quickly add up over the course of a year, and this time can be better spent elsewhere in your business to improve productivity and profitability.
2. Increased time savings
Perhaps the biggest benefit of implementing a stock management system, particularly if you choose an effective solution such as StockAssist, is that you can enjoy significant time savings. Stock management software simplifies your stock control efforts, enabling you to monitor real-time stock levels, create automated alerts for low stock levels, set re-order points and streamline the put away process — all of which greatly enhance time savings.
- Eliminate surplus stock & overselling
Both underselling and overselling can be costly problems for businesses. Surplus stock takes up valuable warehouse space, and if your goods are perishable or have expiry dates, then the challenge becomes even more significant. By contrast, overselling can lead to reputational damage — disappointed customers, complex refund processes, and can even attract disciplinary action from some marketplaces or platforms.
Therefore it is vital to have real-time oversight of stock levels to ensure you always have sufficient levels of stock to sustain your business.
4. Reduce errors
Human error can result in significant consequences, and in some industries it can cause danger or bring harm to people. It is extremely difficult to accurately track and manage stock if you are relying on manual systems or spreadsheets, as human error and laborious processes increase the likelihood of inaccurate data input.
By implementing a software-based stock management system, you can greatly improve data accuracy, as well as saving time and money. This helps you to streamline your supply chain, anticipate and minimise the effects of any supply chain problems, and minimise any potential risks.
- Streamline your warehouse
A key advantage of implementing a formal stock management system is that it enables you to organise and streamline your warehouse or storage unit. Without such a system, warehouses can be messy and disorganised, making it very easy to misplace items. However, with an effective stock management system in place, you can track locations by SKU, making products simpler to find. You can also organise the layout of your storage facilities by categories including best selling and most used products, or by season.
- Significant cost-savings & improved profits
As we have mentioned throughout this article, a good stock management system can significantly reduce business costs and improve profit margins. Cost savings come from a multitude of sources including more efficient utilisation of staff’s time and reducing overstocking and stock wastage.
Stock management software can also provide real-time reporting, allowing you to make data-driven decisions for your business. This can help you better anticipate supply and demand. Having a more streamlined and efficient business is likely to improve customer and client relationships.
All of this can help you make more strategic decisions to drive the direction of your business towards growth and improved profitability.
- Scaling your Business.
In summary…
Implementing a stock management system provides a significantly large number of benefits to an organisation. Cloud-based inventory management software systems are powerful tools that can help you to automate your processes and increase efficiency, productivity and profitability. Real-time reporting can help you to identify trends, anticipate supply and demand, and forecast sales. Stock management systems can also reduce consequential risks such as human error, overselling and overstocking, while saving you time and increasing profit margins. These systems can also support growth and help you to scale your business .
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