It is natural to think twice before investing in an inventory management system. Traditional methods of order management have worked for you until now, so why shouldn’t they in the future? As an independent online seller, most of your time and strategic efforts are involved in managing and operating your business and servicing your customers. Why would you want to put extra time and money to invest in another piece of technology you don’t know much about? The answer is that because it makes your life easier. Inventory management systems are specifically designed for online sellers such as yourselves so that they can delegate and automate most of the repetitive and mundane tasks while enjoying an ease of access and efficiency in their operational processes. Read on if you want to be convinced about the importance of inventory management system in your online sales process.
When Should You Go for an Inventory Management System?
1.When You Are Up to Your Neck With Work
An inventory management system gives you the ability to control the complete expanse of your online business through one console. This is especially true if you go for a multi channel inventory management system, through which you can consolidate your business from all your online stores into one portal. The benefits of having everything under one dashboard are immense. This means ease of access, less clutter and more order in your operations. It also means that every change in your inventory, personnel or product catalogue will be recorded and stored, drastically reducing any margin of error. With multiple user access systems, all your employees can be able to access the console and efficiently carry out their responsibilities.
2.When its Getting Difficult to Manage Your Customers
Inventory management systems can also play a big role in helping you manage your customers. With automated email notification services integrated within the software, your customers receive timely emails regarding the status of the product they ordered. This means, every time you change the status of a particular order on your console, for example from ‘Order Received’ to ‘In Transit’, an automated email in sent to your customer. The system also helps you match the right order with the right customer by making all your data easily accessible.
3. When You Are Spending too Much Time on Printing and Packing
Printing, packing and dispatching are some of the most mundane tasks that an online seller has to take care of. But what if there was system that could help you efficiently manage them and reduce mistakes? This is exactly what an inventory management system does. It creates and prints customized, branded invoices and shipping labels, creates barcodes, SKU codes, basically, everything short of actually packaging the product. And who knows, in some time it will be able to do that too! Using an inventory management system in your packaging and dispatching process reduces the operation time by half! What else do you need?
4.When Your Catalogue is Starting to Get Unmanagable
Inventory management systems can help you effectively manage your catalogues and purchasing processes. They allow you to create, classify and edit product information, brand assets, specifications and pricing. At the same time, they let you configure kits, upsells and cross sells. Multi channel inventory management services go a step further and give you the power to edit and maintain catalogues on multiple online stores through a single portal.
5.When You Don’t Know What Your Operational Strategy Should Be
A good inventory management software also consists of a strong analytics suite in its dashboard. It continuously feeds and records important data relating to the sales and purchases of your products online, inventory changes, catalogue changes and profits. It consolidates and processes the data and presents it to you in the form of graphs, charts and other user friendly analytic tools. You can even feed customizable metrics in some software so that the reporting is done on areas you specifically wish for. All this goes a long way in enhancing your business strategy and helping you make informed business decisions.
In conclusion, Inventory Management System is like a little Genie in a bottle for you. It takes care of your front end, back end and everything in between. So where do you look for your very own inventory management system? Get in touch with Browntape to know more about the benefits you can reap with inventory management systems, or sign up for our 30 day free trial. We are the leading multi channel inventory management software developers and vendors in India and we will be glad to help you out in your online business endeavors.
