Regardless of the industry in which you work, you’ll need to track inventory. From janitorial supplies to inventory of office supplies, every business must track what it owns and purchases. This helps reduce shrink, the business term for merchandise stolen by employees.
Methods of Inventory
A small business office of two or three people might inventory item by item in a few minutes by hand. But what do you do when you own a chain of restaurants or retail stores? Those larger-scale operations require a two-pronged approach. A business with multiple locations needs to subscribe to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) inventory management solution and contract with an outside company to double-check the inventory.
Online Service Providers
Using online inventory management services allows a company to track its overall inventory at all locations with counts done by employees and entered locally. It also lets a company track its overall inventory with a comprehensive report. This can help the company move inventory from one location to another to meet demand without incurring additional costs.
Inventory Management Companies
Some firms exist solely to travel from store to store, company to company, conducting inventory counts to double-check the store employee counts. This process helps reduce shrinkage by identifying store locations that may fudge their inventory reports. The firms send a multi-member inventory team to the physical business location to manually count every item in stock in the store.
Beyond Retail Applications
The healthcare industry also uses both methods of inventorying stock. Medical inventory management encompasses everything in a medical center, hospital, or clinic, from its gauze to drugs available in its pharmacy. Although the medical provider may hire an individual to conduct maintenance of inventory records, using outside companies to double-check the inventory counts ensures the veracity of the data. Healthcare entities must complete federal compliance reports to document their appropriate management of prescription drugs.
Without adequate inventory control systems in place, it can be difficult to track your cash flows and outflows. Plus, software inventory programs can enable some efficiencies and cost savings by allowing you to better track your inventory replenishment. Additionally, inventory management software can help you keep track of returns, shipments and other logistical issues. By doing some preliminary research, you can find the best software inventory system for your business.
To find the best vendors for your inventory tracking system, you can start by consulting colleagues and industry associates for advice on installing an inventory system, especially if they have recent experience with integrating the new system. In addition, you can search various third party review sites for customer feedback and comments that you can use to narrow down your list of highly rated vendors. This is also helpful to see what criteria other customers used to evaluate their inventory software services.
Typical systems for businesses may need significant flexibility, such as the ability to scale the number of users and items tracked, to provide admin capabilities for various functions, and to integrate with computer software or mobile apps. Armed with your research into these potential vendors, you can discuss your individual installation requirements and what options you may have for hardware, software and service subscriptions. While it does not always come down to the cheapest vendor, having multiple quotes for your business phones systems will allow you to make a better determination of which provider is the best fit.
Inventory service vendors may be able to further provide implementation recommendations based on your expected usage and to answer questions about compatibility with existing hardware or software. Regardless of which system you select for your business, doing your research will insure that you put a system in place that is easy to administer, provides exceptional service and allows you to grow as needed. More like this blog.