An inventory management system can optimize your business’s workflow by reducing storage costs, minimizing errors, eliminating shortages and overstocks, and increasing sales. The right system integrates with your business’s existing infrastructure, no matter the size of your operation, increasing collaboration between departments and improving your customer service reputation as a result.
However, even small to mid-sized business (SMBs) have many moving parts. The right inventory system streamlines the goals of each department to deliver a real-time, scalable, and flexible solution to common inventory management problems, no matter the size. Continue reading for a list of steps on how to choose an inventory system that integrates with your existing operations.
Check for system compatibility
Modern businesses run many software solutions from different departments, such as accounting, like Quickbooks or payroll, and POS systems. Normally, these systems acquire and store data separately. They each must be managed individually, often requiring manual input or copying to keep the right records and transfer important data between systems.
A modern inventory system for SMBs should be compatible with all existing systems, so that their data collection and reports run through one software solution.
Preview inventory guidelines
An inventory system for small businesses should work the same as for large ones in that administrators should be able to implement clear guidelines on how the company manages its inventory. This includes how items are priced, how much they should be ordered and how often, how to handle recalls, overstocks, understocks, and spoilage, and how to manage costs.
Normally, you and your team create and enforce these rules manually. The right software can be customized with your management guidelines in place to regulate the performance of your workflow and maintain compliance with your industry’s standards in all departments at once.
Find optimization potential
The right inventory system can assemble timelines of data to help you and your managers identify inefficiencies in your workflow. This can also help you spot errors as they occur and more efficiently manage product recalls.
By tracking sales and expense data, inventory management software can generate useful reports based on the key performance metrics you assign. If multiple software systems are compatible, accounting and POS data can be integrated into your management process, as well.
Utilize feedback
Feedback can come from many sources, including employees, customers, or even the makers of the inventory management system. Their suggestions could be valuable, yet without the ability to organize them, they may not provide practical solutions to workflow inefficiencies.
The ability to assign and collect surveys through the inventory management system, automatically receive assistance and updates from the software vendor, and communicate more efficiently with each department helps inventory software integrate with your whole operation.
Key inventory management software features
To properly integrate with existing systems, an inventory system for SMBs should have:
- Real-time inventory tracking
- Auto-generated purchase orders
- Automated barcoding
- Management from multiple storage locations
- Part- and asset-tracking
- Order fulfillment management
- Shopping cart integration
- Scalable infrastructure
- Feedback surveys
While an inventory management system sounds productive on its own, how its features integrate with a business’s existing infrastructure ultimately determines its usefulness. Look for software solutions that follow the guidelines above to ensure that your business receives the benefits in productivity and efficiency that it should when buying into a new system.
If you are interested in learning how Fishbowl’s flexible inventory management solution can help your business now, you can book a demo.