Introduction

Every business must ensure stock flow and maintain stock levels. This is not an easy task because there are many processes and components involved. It becomes more difficult if your business has multiple warehouses. This article is for business owners who are faced with such a problem.

Multi-warehouse inventory management systems offer many benefits

Multi-warehouse inventory management is as simple as its name. It refers to inventory operations that involve more than one warehouse. Multi-warehouse inventory management is a better option for business owners and managers because it makes things more difficult than if you only have one warehouse to manage.

• Make sure that all your warehouses are working together smoothly

• To maximize your return on investment (ROI), ensure stock flow and manage stock levels

• Avoid selling too much

• Ensure order fulfillment

• Comprehensive reports gathered data from all warehouses provide valuable insight into optimizing your business.

Without further ado, here are some tips that we find meaningful for you to manage multi-warehouse inventory efficiently, leveraging a POS system.

Tips for managing multi-warehouse inventory efficiently

Ensure synchronization

Multi-warehouse inventory is as simple as its name. It combines multiple warehouses that are being operated simultaneously. It is therefore necessary to sync between different warehouses as well as multiple warehouses and stores in order for an omnichannel experience. However, it can be tricky.

Integrating your brick-and-mortar and online stores is key to solving this problem. If a customer purchases a product via any of the channels you have integrated into the system, then the stock level on all channels will be updated in real time. This not only helps to avoid inventory shortages but also prevents you from selling out-of-stock products.

Business owners can also know which route is the most direct from which warehouse to their customers’ shipping addresses by using real-time synchronization of multi-warehouse inventory. This allows retailers to speed up the delivery process and improve customer satisfaction by routing sales order fulfillment orders to the closest warehouse.

Analytics can help you maximize the ROI of your inventory

Poor inventory management can have unintended consequences for ROI. These consequences can be even more severe if you don’t manage multi-warehouses well. Retail inventory reports allow business owners to see exactly what to do to optimize their inventory’s ROI.

Eliminate dead stock

Any inventory that doesn’t sell or is sold at a very low rate that is not considered significant is called dead stock. You are putting your business at great risk if you don’t use inventory management software, especially if you have multiple warehouses. This means that dead stock will remain in your warehouses forever, forgotten by you and your customers.

Your business’s performance is negatively affected by dead stock in many ways. Dead stock not only takes up warehouse and store space, but also lowers your ROI. For most retailers, stock that hasn’t been sold in six months is likely to cause a decrease in inventory turnover.

Here are some ways to get rid off dead stock.

• To quickly sell dead stock, launch a promotion or discount program
• Make deals with distributors to swap dead stock for new inventory at an acceptable exchange rate.
• To get a tax deduction, you can donate the stock to charity.

Assess slow-moving stocks

Slow-moving inventory sells more than dead inventory which doesn’t sell. If you don’t take action quickly, slow-moving inventory could become dead inventory.

Slow-moving inventory is just like dead stock. It takes up space and negatively affects your store’s profitability. How do you determine if a particular item is slow-moving or not? How do you deal with slow-moving items?

• Set selling goals

Set selling goals in your POS to make it easy for you to identify products that are not selling and those that are selling well. This will help you to spot slow-moving stock and allow you to restock products that are selling better than expected.

• Show slow-movers with more prominence

It’s simple, but it is still very effective. Your slow-moving inventory can be made more visible by being placed next to your most relevant best-sellers. This requires some thought and a reasonable arrangement. It is not absurd to place slow-moving items on the same shelves with products that are not related. This will make your slow-movers and best sellers stand out and increase their chances of customers adding them to their carts.

Double your profits on the best-sellers

It is not uncommon for business owners to decide on the product they want to stock or restock. This is to some degree acceptable, as you want your business to be a joy. It will get you excited about your business if you identify the top-sellers and increase your stock. Your customers will eventually buy your products.

This is why the pareto principle (or 80/20 rule) is very popular in business. This rule states that 20% of any cause can have 80% of its effects. It can be explained that around 80% of your sales will likely come from 20% of the products and services you sell. As a business owner, your task is to identify those 20% and then pay attention.

Also, look for complementary products and cross-sell them. When deciding what products to add to your inventory, remove emotional and intuitive elements. This will help you increase sales.

Businesses that have multiple warehouses make it even more important to determine if dead stock in one location is also dead stock in the other, slow-movers, best-sellers, or both. Business owners are able to make timely and insightful decisions.

Keep your warehouses in good order

As in life, unexpected events can occur even if you have a well-built multi warehouse inventory. You may run out of stock on popular items during peak seasons like holidays and Black Friday. It can be even more difficult to manage multiple warehouses.

Keep your inventory up to date and communicate with suppliers well in advance so they know the lead time for ordering inventory. Remember that seasonal rushes can also affect suppliers. Multi-warehouse inventory management systems should be able to notify you when inventory levels in any warehouse or item drop. This will allow you to place reorders at the right time.

It is worthwhile to inform your customers when more stock becomes available if you run out of stock, no matter how diligent you may be. To make your customers happy, you might offer them a coupon code and free shipping when the item comes back in stock.

Reports can help you make multi-warehouse management strategies more effective

There’s always room to improve, so make sure you get the most of your multi-warehouse inventory in POS. This will allow you to identify and determine where you can make improvements to your inventory.

According to Scanco, businesses spend between 25 and 35% on inventory every year. If not managed well, such a large amount of money could cause serious damage to a company. Businesses with poor inventory management tend to spend more on their inventory costs, which results in lower profits and greater risk of going bankrupt.

First and foremost, you must create an inventory plan. This can be done by reviewing detailed reports that include data from all channels. What were the most popular products in which time period? Which marketing campaigns and promotions have the highest sales? This will allow you to determine if your current distribution and sourcing methods work and what products you should or not reorder next year.

Next, think about how your industry and business have changed. Have you expanded your business into other areas? Are you selling online? Are you using social media to communicate with customers? You can create a better inventory plan with all the information you have about the past and future.

To summarize

An effective inventory management system is essential for any business’s success, especially if you have multiple warehouses. It can be difficult and complex to manage multi-warehouse inventory. Here are some key tips: Ensure synchronization; use analytics to maximize your inventory ROI; keep your inventory in order; and create better multi-warehouse management strategies with reports.

Do you feel scared or dizzy thinking about how much work it will take to manage multi-warehouse inventory? You don’t have to worry about it, a POS system will do the job for you. Monitoring is all that’s required.

Many POS solution providers can assist you with multi-warehouse inventory control. Some of these are ConnectPOS and Kobe Digital. For more assistance, contact us now!