How your Business can Benefit from an Inventory Management App

August 23, 2020

Companies can get a 25% increase in productivity, a 20% gain in space usage, and a 30% improvement in stock use efficiency if they use integrated order processing for their inventory system.

When considering business growth, many business owners want generating new leads and converting them into sales right away. However, they often overlook important tasks such as inventory management, which gets attention when problems arise. While it looks trivial, proper asset tracking is critical to prevent costly mistakes. Poor stock control can reduce revenues in multiple ways: stockouts, which hinder the fulfillment of orders, and overstocking, which increases waste, cost of storage, and creates problems with cash flow.

As your business expands and order volumes increase, managing stock becomes more difficult. Using a manual stock control system might seem effective initially, but as operations scale, this approach can quickly become unmanageable. This is where an inventory management app becomes important. Investing in such a stock control system offers quite a few advantages that can grow your business.

Firstly, an inventory app provides real-time visibility into your stock levels. This means you can have an instant knowledge of what you have in stock, what items need to be reordered, and what’s moving slowly.

This data helps you, as a business owner or an operational manager, prevent both stockouts and overstocking, ensuring you can meet demands without having excess inventory.

Secondly, using an asset tracking app improves your operations. This improved automation reduces the time and effort you need to spend on manual stock tracking, freeing up resources for more important tasks. This efficiency improves your operations to faster order and keep your customers happy, which can greatly improve your company and department reputation.

Moreover, such asset tracking software helps improve cash flow. By optimizing inventory levels, you can avoid storing excess inventory.

Many of these advantages pay for themselves almost immediately, providing you with a near-instant efficiency gain that can quickly propel your organization to the next level.

But first, let's define an asset tracking app and how to tell if your company requires one. We will also provide you with some helpful tips for selecting the best inventory app.

What is an inventory management app?

An inventory management app is a utility app that empowers the management of your department's or your business stock levels, whether it is incoming or outgoing orders to other incoming important data such as stock expiration date and location. An inventory app works upon the premise of showing the up to date current stock level of your business at a precise real-time, enabling you to take important decisions such as ordering new products or how inventory quantities should be maintained.

These apps for iPhone and Android come with lots of features and capabilities that in turn differ based on the needs of your business and the kind of solution you use.

Some general features of an inventory management app:

• Stock Improvement Unit (SKU) Following
  Using this app, you can see your stock level and the location where it stores. track inventory This is very suitable for companies that have multiple locations or warehouses within cities, or in other countries.

• Inventory prediction
  A stock tracking app will notify you when you're coming close to low stock level and when the products need reordering. You can prevent stock outs by planning your production ahead.

• Order management
  Some stock control systems contain tools that allow you to design, track, and fill orders using the platform.

• Data analysis and reporting
  The best inventory apps provide valuable reports based on your stock levels, sales patterns, and other data, letting you make informed stock-keeping decisions.

• Multiple platforms
  The best inventory management apps are available across many platforms, including web, desktop, and mobile. You're now able to access the stock from anywhere in one.

• Flexible Integrations
  Today's inventory management systems typically integrate with popular enterprise management solutions, accounting, and eCommerce software. The suite of software gives you the ability to streamline your workflow, and avoid any data-entry duplications.

How do you know you need an inventory management app?

When bottlenecks start to appear, small businesses are likely relying on less-sophisticated stock keeping solutions like spreadsheets or the more archaic pen-and-paper style. These methods are okay for small businesses that only receive a few orders. But as their business grows, they find it harder to handle their stock-keeping efforts manually. Without an inventory app, you won't be able to track your stock at all.

To figure out if you could benefit from the best inventory management app, ask yourself a few questions:

1. I need to rely on a daily basis. Do I count my stock?
2. Do you spend most of your time just managing inventory?
3. Do you often find overstock or understock?
4. Do I come across errors with my stock data?

If you’ve ever said ‘yes’ to any of these questions, your business needs an inventory management app.

Discover the benefits of the best inventory management app for your business

With increasing complexities in supply-chain operations and evolving customer expectations, inventory app trackers are growing in popularity.

‘Companies can get 25% more productivity, 20% use more space, and 30% better stock use efficiency if they use integrated order processing for their inventory system,’ Easy Post reports.

How will an inventory management application benefit your business?

1. Improved efficiency
   Thanks to real-time data, ordering the right quantities of items and supplies without over-stocking or under-stocking, becomes easy. With this data, you can identify products that sell quickly or slowly and refine your marketing and advertising efforts accordingly.

2. Improved team collaboration
   Every business owner tracking stock in Excel spreadsheets or physical inventory files can tell you how hard it is to get every team member on the same page. However, with an inventory management app, your entire team can easily get real-time access to the same stock information and make decisions based on real-time data.

   For instance, if you’re running low on stock of a particular item, your purchase agents can quickly buy more, and your sales team can sell alternatives to clients instead of taking orders for items that are not available.

3. Improved scaling
   Downsizing a business is tough, let alone running a business that scales. With an efficient stock control system, you’ll have little worry about scaling. Manual inventory makes it difficult to keep up with constant changes in consumer demands. An inventory management app gives you the ability to easily scale your business up or down quickly.

   For instance, Britecheck allows you to add or delete products with a simple drag and drop. If you run low on storage space, you could simply upgrade your subscription plan. Your inventory system will grow with your business.

4. Reduced errors
   Humans make mistakes, there’s no denying it. So, it comes as no surprise that most businesses using manual inventory methods maintain stock data with errors – from miscounted products to wrong labels. Britecheck allows you to scan the barcode or product label to add items to your inventory list. This means it’s easy to avoid making errors. Improved data safety If your business still uses pen and paper or Excel spreadsheets to manage your inventory, your data is not safe. Worse still, you could still use a spreadsheet to manage your business. True story. Because nothing is safer than Excel templates after all. Either way, a misplaced file or forgotten laptop is all it takes to put your business at risk.

   However, an asset tracking app stores your data in the cloud, which means you can always rely on it to be backed up and available where and whenever you need it. To keep your data safe, you can use two-factor authentication and password protection that most apps come with.

5. Improved customer satisfaction
   Fulfilling orders on time and in complete order can be downright impossible without proper inventory management. Our team at Britecheck literally ditched hundreds of pounds worth of pens because filling in dockets or invoices wasn’t easy or efficient.

   Choosing the right inventory management system can help businesses streamline stock control and avoid running out of stock. Most importantly, you can stay on top of your assets so that disappointed customers don’t have to gripe about the products unavailable or delayed.

6. Improved profitability
   With an inventory management app that automates inventory management, your business could get rid of waste, reduce cost on storage and admin, and save resources for tasks that add more value. Moreover, your stock would be information linked to real-time data, which can help you to improve decision-making on pricing, promotion, and product mix.

Here are seven important factors to consider when selecting a new asset tracking solution:

• Is it easy to use?
  The best inventory management apps operate in as simple a manner as possible. They are intuitive, easy to operate and feature a user-friendly design that anyone in your organization can easily learn.

• Is it adaptable?
  They are in business to adapt to your requirements. Your inventory app should be scalable enough to be able to adapt to different business needs at any given time. Business dynamics being what they are, changes can come at you almost unexpectedly depending on the current environment.

• Is it scalable?
  A main component of a good inventory management solution should be the ability to scale alongside your business. Look for an app that has a range of features you can implement as the need arises.

• Can the software scan barcodes and QR codes?
  The ability to read barcodes and QR codes are essential to having any inventory management solution work. These functions allow you to add products to your inventory quickly and accurately.

• Can it send real-time, cross-platform notifications?
  Some of the best stock control solutions will allow you to utilize it across multiple platforms. Ideally, you should be looking for an app that can send inventory alerts regarding stock levels across different devices.

• Can it generate reports?
  Some best asset tracking apps feature a series of built in reports that can be easily generated and exported over a wide range of durations – daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. These inventory reports will help you understand business trends and how you can adjust.

• Is it low cost to implement?
  Do not overpay for an inventory app. As much as possible, you should be looking for a solution that provides features useful enough for your business at a price that fits within a budget.

Britecheck: Simplify Stock Control with Inventory Management App

Britecheck is a cloud-based inventory management software that integrates with both iOS and Android apps to help you manage your inventory efficiently and effectively. Britecheck offers your business a barcode and QR code scanning functionality that tracks your inventory and generates detailed stock reports depending on the period you choose. You also get to keep track of specific items, including data such as stock quantity, price, warehouse location, description, and other parameters important to you and your team, enabling your business to make accurate predictions, and confidently place orders. The platform similarly provides simple barcode scanning without additional expensive equipment.

Britecheck offers three different pricing plans. You may start with the most affordable option and progress to the next as your business expands, saving you money and generating more income. Additionally, Britecheck is the best inventory management solution for small businesses that will help you transform your inventory process from a burden to an advantage.

Try Inventory App for Free Now to streamline inventory tracking and enhance productivity.