10 Inventory Management Challenges and Their Solutions in 2022!
COVID-19 caused a severe interruption in the eCommerce supply chain management. It introduced the sellers to the importance of robust inventory management. A successful eCommerce business requires an efficient inventory management system. The primary element of online business is to get your products delivered to your valuable customers. In this manner, a top-notch inventory management system helps you meet your customers’ demands and understand market trends.
The rising competition in the eCommerce industry has made it necessary for sellers to adopt and embrace advanced software to sustain and flourish in the eCommerce industry. At this point, the exact need for inventory management software emerges. Here in this blog, we have mentioned ten challenges of inventory management and their compelling solutions. So, without further ado, let’s know about these challenges and solutions.
Ten Challenges of Inventory Management in 2022
Managing the inventory is undoubtedly a daunting task. This entire process and its result impact every aspect of your online business. Being a seller, you must have experienced many challenges related to inventory management. Here are the most common challenges in front of you that can help you to understand this subject better.
Erratic Tracking
The traditional process of manually tracking the inventory through ERP and spreadsheets is time-consuming, superfluous, and consists of errors. However, sellers can add inventory management software to their system and track their inventory in real time.
Warehouse Performance
Warehousing includes several steps such as receiving the order, picking, packing, and shipping. It controls the inventory management system, and the real challenge is to process these steps as efficiently as possible. Thus, impeccable inventory management depends upon the performance of warehouses also.
Inaccuracy in Data
Those days are gone when sellers counted their inventory once a month or year. In this competitive eCommerce world, you must count how much inventory you have in stock and how many are gone. Inaccuracy in data can make you face a situation of customer dissatisfaction, and later on, it impacts the overall sales.
Uncertain Customers’ Demand
The biggest challenge of inventory management is customers’ constantly changing demands. To tackle this situation, you can overstock the products or keep a tiny amount of inventory. Both of these conditions will not be applicable to match the customers’ demand. However, it would be best to pursue a solid strategy and advanced software. It can help in understanding the changing demands of customers.
Narrow Visibility
If your inventory is hard to find or identify in the warehouse, it automatically leads to inaccurate, incomplete, and delayed shipment. Finding and receiving the right stock at the right time is essential for a dynamic warehouse procedure and decisive customer experiences.
Manually Documented Inventory
The manual inventory management process is exhausting and time-consuming. It is not even secure to go ahead. It doesn’t even scale up across the multiple warehouses with a humongous amount of stock.
Complex Supply Chain
The daily supply chain is shifting globally, and it puts a burden on your inventory strategy and other operations related to the eCommerce business. It requires unpredictability and flexibility to ship your inventory according to your wholesalers or manufacturers.
Warehouse Space Managing
Managing the warehouse space efficiently is a terrifying task. The proper planning and designing of warehouse spaces and inventory management help you have control over the timing of new stock deliveries.
Inadequate Order Management
The most common challenge of inventory management is prohibiting the overstocking of products and running out of stock. Although, using the historical and seasonal data of market trends can help you meticulously predict customer orders and save you from inadequate order management.
Raising Competition
The competition in the eCommerce industry is rising rapidly. It has become necessary for sellers to match the speed of the market. Sometimes you may face the challenge of selling high-demand products in the marketplace. It requires you to hold onto a large inventory to generate sales.
So the above are some significant challenges of inventory management that you can experience in the absence of an accurate inventory system. Now, let’s go further to find the solutions to these challenges.
Ten Prominent Solutions for Inventory Management Challenges
Centralized Inventory Tracking
The advanced inventory tracking software facilitates automated features for re-ordering and acquisition. Several advanced software in the market provides centralized and cloud-based data for accurate and automatic inventory updates. It also has the feature of providing real-time data.
Clarity on Performance
Having clarity on the business’s overall performance is important. You must have clarity over inventory turnover, customer satisfaction, and the speed of order processing. These data can help you uplift the performance and speed of your online business. It further helps in managing the inventories as well.
Forecasting the Demands
Some available inventory management software consists of forecasting the future demand of customers. This compelling software integrates with accounting and sales data and helps you predict customers’ demands during a specific time of the year. Especially during the festival season when every eCommerce marketplace runs its sale fair.
Add Images
To restrict misplaced inventory and enhance accuracy, you must add images with accurate product descriptions in your inventory database. It also promotes the purchasing and receiving process.
Precautionary Control
Implementing the stock control system can help in managing the issues of inventory, such as easily spoiled products, fragile items, or outdated materials. As per the requirement, performing regular precautionary control on machinery and products in the storage is essential to monitor the shelf life and prohibit wastage.
Regulate the Service Levels
To tackle inventory management challenges, it is required to track and observe your supplier’s data. It includes errors related to the shipment, defective or damaged products, and missed delivery appointments. You must regulate the performance of suppliers to fix the interruption of the supply chain, streamline logistics and decrease complications.
Optimize Warehouse Space
You can use inventory management software with warehouse management features to optimize the flow of inventory and the storage space of the warehouse. You can easily categorize the inventories into several compartments and automate the picking, packing, and shipping process.
Segregate the Inventory
Dynamic inventory management requires the segregation of inventories. You can segregate the inventories based on product type, size, and packaging. It can help you easily find the specific inventory in no time. You can also use this information to control shipping costs.
Multi-Location Warehousing
To track and regulate the spreading inventories, use any advanced software’s multi-location warehouse management feature. It can also provide automated inventory tracking alerts and scheduling features that can help keep an eye on various warehouse locations and the in-transit inventory.
Diminish Human Errors
The primary challenge of maintaining accuracy in inventory management is human errors. It will appear again and again if you use the traditional form of managing the inventories. To get rid of human errors, you must get along with the inventory management software. It automates all the steps related to inventory and diminishes errors.
Conclusion
Now you must understand how to deal with the challenges of inventory management. The answer is inventory management software that automates the process and helps in improving inventory practices. Later on, it ultimately enhances the customer experience and adds more value to your business. You can the eVanik OWS for managing your inventory better than anyone else.
