How your Business can Benefit from an Inventory Management App

Inventory management is one of the biggest challenges for business owners around the world. The ever-changing customer demands and sky-rocketing competition have made it overwhelmingly difficult to achieve efficient stock-keeping.

Adding fuel to the fire is the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic and its colossal impact on global supply chains. Manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers, both online and in physical stores, are struggling to cope with the volatility in demand and supply. As a result, most have thrown traditional inventorying techniques out the window in favor of newer, more agile practices.

Among these new solutions are mobile-and web-based inventory management apps. In small businesses, apps have replaced less intuitive and more laborious Excel spreadsheets for tracking stock. Meanwhile, larger organizations are supplementing fully-fledged enterprise resource management systems with apps to offer faster and easier stock visibility and tracking.

Why does your business need an inventory tracking app?

Is your inventory management process struggling? An inventory app may be all you need to turn things around. The best inventory app can make stock management a breeze, regardless of your industry. This seamless inventorying will benefit your business in more than a few crucial ways.

1. Quicker and more accurate inventory management

According to studies, the inventory accuracy of the average retail business is about 63%. This number is worrying, especially if you consider the damage that inaccurate data can cause.

One of the leading causes of inaccurate inventory data is manual record-keeping. For most small businesses, stock management primarily involves visiting a warehouse, recording information on paper, and transferring the same data to a computer program. In addition to wasting valuable time, this process amplifies the probability of error.

Using an app for inventory management can dramatically increase the efficiency of your processes. Because staff members can register inventory interactions on-site with their smartphones, most stock-related paperwork can be avoided.

Your procurement team can create purchase orders and perform quick edits while at the point of service. Similarly, your warehouse staff can record material receipts, usage, and stock counts right from their mobile devices.

Even more remarkable is that the best inventory apps can integrate with a smartphone camera to turn it into a bar code scanner. This feature opens the doors for automation, eliminating the errors associated with manual stock-taking.

2. Better data visibility for accurate planning

An IBM study reports visibility as a top challenge for supply chain officers. Many companies struggle to acquire a holistic view of both core and non-core inventory items. Consequently, they find it challenging to plan for orders, consumption, replenishments, and sales.

A proper inventory management app can give you full visibility of your stock whenever you need it. With a few screen touches, you can see everything, from what goes in and out to overstocked or understocked items. You can also know the raw material purchases in the pipeline and the customers committed to their orders.

Best of all, an inventory app leverages the power of smartphone notifications to keep you alerted on changes in stock levels, new receipts and orders, and important dates.

With all this information at your fingertips, you can make more accurate decisions to optimize inventory and meet demand efficiently.

3. Balanced stock

Balancing inventory is a malignant headache for inventory managers. Ignoring stock levels can quickly lead to overstocking or run-outs. None of these scenarios is good for business. Not ordering enough raw materials can result in insufficiently met demand and dissatisfied customers. On the other hand, having too much of an item means incurring more warehousing costs and wasting valuable storage space.

Fortunately, an inventory management app can step in to prevent both occurrences. With an app, you can easily set up automatic purchase requisitions whenever stocks go below acceptable safety levels. An app can also deliver alerts of overstocked or understocked items right to your phone so that you can take the right action as soon as possible.

4. Cheaper inventory management

An inventory app that is perfectly suited for your business can save you money in several ways. For starters, automated stock-keeping means less manual work, which translates to fewer resource requirements. More accuracy also translates to fewer errors and less expenditure on damage control.

Furthermore, organizing inventory with a mobile app reduces overstocking and understocking losses. Since the app identifies the best quantities to hold and tells you when and what to order and use, you can rest knowing your stock levels are optimum at all times.

5. Happy Customers

A business that successfully balances its inventory meets customer demand effectively. Happy buyers bring return business and enable you to become a trusted name in the marketplace.

All the benefits of an inventory management app will translate to a better reputation among your customers. For instance, increased accuracy means you are more likely to deliver the right product to the right place, at the right time. Moreover, automated record management means faster order fulfillment.

With a comprehensive inventory app, your customer appreciation will rise, and you will gain a much-needed edge over your competition.