As anyone in the retail business knows, you can’t sell what you don’t have. There is probably no greater challenge to e-commerce than not being able to fulfill an order once a customer has decided to buy from you. Think about it, all the effort that you put into marketing, promotion, Google Adwords and all the rest come down to one single moment in time when the customer places the order.

If you have a strong inventory management system for a small business in place then you have nothing to worry about, but if you don’t, there is no telling what the customer might see when they hit the buy button. You don’t want to be the retailer that can’t deliver so we are going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you, but first, let’s go on a little journey.

Keeping Track of the Goods with Inventory Management For Small Business

In the early days (you may still be in this phase) it was relatively easy to track your inventory manually. You probably had just a few SKUs and you had a gut feel for keeping the right quantity of products in inventory. The impact of damage, theft and other forms of shrinkage were not issues that had any real impact on your business so why even consider implementing an inventory management for a small business system?

This is where it gets interesting. By delaying the investment in an inventory management system for small business until you are a “larger company” will actually impede your growth trajectory. Sounds counter-intuitive? Not really and here’s why: The dirty little secret called “discrepancies” or more importantly, figuring out what happened to the inventory.

This is a very undervalued area of your business and deserves your attention because if you spend the time to make your inventory more accurate in the background, you will have more time to investigate the cause of the discrepancies and take steps to prevent the issue from repeating.

Predicting the Future with Inventory Management for Small Business

Keeping track of supply and demand is a gargantuan task and requires knowledge of how much of each product you need to purchase and how this will change over time or seasonally.

You also need to take into consideration your current inventory and sales trends before you can place that critical order with your vendor. If you are like the majority of people in the world you cannot see the future so you need “smart” small business inventory tracking software that can help you predict your purchasing needs.

Without this tool, you are basing your purchasing on gut instinct or flying blind as they say. When you are small, this might work some of the time but as your business grows you will not be able to continue purchasing in this manner. For this reason, alone, it is in your best interest to implement this tool while you are still small enough to reap the benefits of faster growth.

The Customer is Always Right

Remember that old saying “there is no such thing as bad publicity”, well in today’s “review” oriented world, that saying just does not apply. The experience that your customer has with ordering from you and what they write about that experience will be determined by what you did to ensure that you had the right product available at the right time based on the recommendations of the small business inventory tracking software.

So don’t be that retailer that becomes known as the retailer that can’t deliver what is offered. Take the time now to invest in a forecasting sales and inventory software for small business system that will ensure that you don’t run out of product before you receive it from your vendor. You’ll be glad you made the investment.

Talk to an expert to ensure you are the retailer that can always deliver.

(Visited 44 times, 1 visits today)