Keeping an eye on your online store’s inventory is hard enough when you’re just running one store. When you have numerous shops, it becomes rather the complicated task. Among the hardest parts about managing the inventory of your stores is keeping the inventory in sync. Different stores are receiving different orders, and your inventory has to stay precise and in sync for all your stores.
Keeping your inventory in sync is important since it makes sure sale of items that you know remain in stock. Say you have 5 of a particular product in stock, and among your online stores offers all 5. If your inventory doesn’t immediately sync across all your stores, your other stores might still see 5 of that product in stock and sell the product that you are actually sold out of. This creates an uncomfortable circumstance where you need to deal with a customer who purchased a product you can’t offer them, and just does not look helpful for your business.
Handling inventory accessibility is the primary problem we hear multichannel clients desire to solve. Hand keying inventory availability in as purchases happen, struggling to avoid out-of-stocks and cancellations, is pricey, resource intense, demanding. By hand entering orders from one system mistake prone.
When looking for an eCommerce Inventory Management system there are a number of factors to consider a retailer needs to consider. The more locations your inventory lies and the more channels you offer on, the more complex inventory management ends up being. Integration, automation, and synchronization will be crucial elements of managing your eCommerce inventory.
To streamline and streamline your inventory management, try to find the following performance when choosing an eCommerce management system or stand-alone inventory management system:
Inventory Synchronization Across Channels
A retailer selling on more than one online channel, such as their own online store plus Amazon and eBay, will have to have an inventory management system that synchronizes inventory levels across every channel. Lots of merchants sell the very same inventory on numerous channels to increase their possibility of selling their items. When a product sells out on Amazon booking the last system of inventory at the warehouse, the last thing you desire as a retailer is to be unaware that the product is still offered for sale on your other channels, like your website or eBay. Having a system that integrates inventory with your order management is crucial. With the right eCommerce inventory management system, inventory levels on each channel will adjust in real-time as orders are gotten, eliminating items that are out-of-stock immediately from all online shops.
Automated Real-time Updates
Real-time updates are vital to inventory management. This needs your inventory management system to have a connection to everywhere inventory is equipped and satisfied from your warehouses, suppliers, dropshippers, 3PLs and Amazon FBA. As inventory is received and orders are fulfilled by your system, inventory feeds with updated stock levels are instantly imported into your inventory management system. This real-time functionality allows you to automatically upgrade inventory so that out-of-stock items are gotten rid of from all your online channels to prevent over-selling, while at the same time, instantly republishing these products as quickly as new inventory is received.
Store Integration
Every retailer selling on more than one online channel– B2C, B2B, mobile, POS– requires to have a consolidated view of their inventory. An eCommerce inventory management system that is able to link to your eCommerce platform, marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, as well as your POS system, is essential for preserving this combined inventory dataset. From one screen, a retailer will have the ability to view the quantity of inventory released or unpublished of every product on every store, and remain in the understand of where all of your inventory is being assigned.
Warehouse Integration
Many retailers have inventory in several areas. This may include internal warehouses, external warehouses, drop carriers, and fulfillment centers like Amazon FBA. Merchants will also desire to ensure that their eCommerce inventory management system that is able to integrate with each of these areas. This will give sellers the ability to choose a primary warehouse for satisfaction and from one screen, see the amount of inventory in stock or expected to be received at every inventory location.
Warehouse integration also involves getting inventory, usually using barcode scanners. One of the fastest and simplest ways to count and determine inventory is using barcode scanners or RFID weapons. An eCommerce inventory management system that is suitable with these scanners a retailer makes use of at their warehouse will reduce the time it takes to count inventory while enhancing the order pick process for every order.
Frequently, an eCommerce inventory management system that consists of all the above and interacts with your warehouse management, order management, and product management system, is most useful to an eCommerce retailer. Learn more on how SalesWarp assists sellers simplify inventory management, or to find out more, take a look at other current short articles.
