What do you do when the high costs of inventory damage, obsolescence, and pilferage erode profit? What do you do when you lack real-time inventory data to properly manage these aforementioned warehouse management costs? These costs erode profit because companies lack the technology to properly manage their inventory counts.
Inventory is often damaged due to poor handling, but poor handling is typically caused by poor storage practices. Here are five critical ways you can use technology to improve warehouse productivity, while protecting your inventory from damage.
Managing inventory by Excel spreadsheets is an outdated strategy that will cost your company valuable time. This manual approach to warehouse management is rarely accurate. In fact, Excel spreadsheets are only updated when someone does it by hand, which ultimately means they don’t operate in real time. Barcoding inventory and tracking inventory counts through a warehouse management system helps you avoid stockouts, while also helping you to better manage your inventory and warehouse management costs.
1. Barcoding Inventory
Managing inventory by Excel spreadsheets is an outdated strategy that will cost your company valuable time. This manual approach to warehouse management is rarely accurate. In fact, Excel spreadsheets are only updated when someone does it by hand, which ultimately means they don’t operate in real time. Barcoding inventory and tracking inventory counts through a warehouse management system helps you avoid stockouts, while also helping you to better manage your inventory and warehouse management costs.
2. Handheld Mobile Scanners
Barcoding inventory is one thing, but empowering your warehouse employees with the proper tools to manage that inventory involves providing them with handheld mobile scanners. Warehouse management doesn’t merely involve entering values into a laptop. It involves tracking incoming and outgoing shipments with an accuracy that simplifies how your purchasing, inventory, and warehouse management teams reconcile inventory counts. It’s those accurate inventory counts that your sales team needs in order to win business.
Want to see how Fishbowl can improve your business?
Book a Demo