Manufacturers and distributors are well versed in the trials and tribulations associated with inventory management. Strategic inventory management can protect profit margins and contribute to the bottom line. On the other hand, managing inventory can easily get out of control and lead to costly mistakes that impact both revenue and customer relationships. Avoid these four inventory management disasters and keep a firm grip on inventory with PanatrackerGP Inventory Management barcode solution.
As business grows, you may expand into new areas, extend product lines, and service new customers. These changes introduce new challenges with inventory management. You may have new vendors, shorter deadlines, and faster manufacturing or distribution operations. At any point in this process, you can easily lose control and visibility into inventory needs.
Look out for these warnings
Any of these inventory disasters challenging your business?
- Tied up capital: A common knee-jerk reaction when experiencing growth is to stock-up on inventory. Overstocking the warehouse because you don’t understand what Inventory is needed and when will consume capital and therefore leads to waste. Items can expire, become obsolete or simply may not sell—all of which is bad for your bottom line.
- Stock-outs: Without real-time inventory insight, you won’t know when safety buffer levels are reaching precariously low levels. Running out of key inventory items could halt production, bring distribution to a halt, and frustrate customers.
- Backorders: Customers don’t want to see partial deliveries or wait for items on backorder. If you can’t fulfill customer orders accurately and timely, you put these relationships at risk. In today’s crowded marketplace, you customers could quickly turn to a competitor that is more responsive and accurate with deliverables.
- Undeliverables: In rare situations, you may find that you simply can’t fulfill a customer’s order. Timing, costs or unavailable inventory can put you in a very difficult situation which, at best, leaves you with an unhappy customer.
Strengthen Inventory Management with PanatrackerGP
Businesses can take a more proactive approach to inventory management through the deployment of stronger technology. PanatrackerGP provides real-time insight into inventory, inventory movement, and trends you can use to strategize stronger, profitable inventory management. In addition, our post on “3 Critical Questions to Ask About Barcode Technology” gives more insight on how to evaluate a solution.
Here are three tips for strengthening inventory management:
- Strategize: Identify inventory locations across your enterprise, including warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities. Note shelves, bins, and other inventory locations at each site.
- Understand inventory movement: Barcoding inventory is key for fast-moving inventory. Even efficient workers make keystroke mistakes, whereas barcode scanners can accurately track items coming and going from all your facilities.
- Optimize your technology: Even with a strong enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution like Microsoft Dynamics GP, you may need more powerful inventory functionality. PanatrackerGP Inventory Management is an extension of Dynamics GP that handles and streamlines these more complicated processes. You can establish real time inventory levels, desktop reminders, and a pull-based, leaner inventory system.
Businesses with complex inventory operations need more sophisticated technology to achieve success. Strengthen control and insight over inventory with the support of modern Dynamics GP barcoding solutions, like PanatrackerGP. Contact us for additional information on how to ensure your inventory contributes to the bottom line instead of stealing from it.
