When most people consider inventory management, they think about retail applications. While operations in retail businesses rely heavily on inventory management; the management systems in inventory are widely utilized in a different range of industries, from manufacturing to utilities, education, healthcare, government, and many more. Best Inventory control systems streamline and centralize the method for controlling the flow and maintenance of inventory to confirm that the correct amount of inventory is out there at the proper time and of the best quality.
What is an Inventory Management System?
An inventory management system is the combo of technology (software and hardware), processes and procedures that helps in monitoring and maintenance of products in stock, whether those products are assets of the company, raw materials, and supplies, or finished products ready to be sent to different vendors or end-users. It is all about specifying the availability of stocked goods at micro level. A complete inventory management system consists of:
- A system to identify every inventory item and associated information, like barcode labels or asset tags.
- Hardware tools such as handheld barcode scanners or with barcode scanning apps enabled smartphones for reading barcode labels.
- Online inventory management software, that provides a single database and reference point for all inventory, connected with the ability to data analysis, generate reports, forecast future demand, and many more.
- Processes and policies for documentation, labeling, and reporting. This should include an inventory management technique such as Just in Time, ABC Analysis, First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Stock Review, or another proven methodology.
- An active resource who trained to follow these policies and processes.
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Major challenges in Inventory Management Systems
When an inventory management system is implemented properly, it can have a dramatic effect on productivity and efficiency in the overall process. Many challenges related to inventory management systems crop up due to failing to follow the best practices or depending on outdated systems, such as documenting manually and inconsistent storage layouts and processes. Below are major challenges in Inventory Control System:
- How to handle Stock transactions?
- How to do Material Receipt Note?
- How to Check Buffer Stock?
- How to do inventory evaluation?
- How to control stock cost?
- How to Manage Stock Types(BOM and FG)?
- How to handle Bill of materials?
- How to bifurcate separately Finished goods and Semi finished good stock?
- How to handle vendor levels?
- How to define product masters and product categories?
- Is it possible to tag “N’ number of vendors against the particular product?
- How to do Actual stock adjustment?
- How to increase Inventory Productivity?
- How to handle material movement cycle?
Benefits of Inventory Management System
The products that flow through an organization will inevitably be in disarray without a proper inventory management system. An inventory control system enables a company to maintain a centralized record of every asset and item in the control of the organization, providing a single source of data for the location of every item, vendor and supplier information, specifications, and the total number of a particular item currently available in stock.
In stock management, inventory often consists of movable assets, management of inventory is important for keeping track of current levels of stock and understanding what products or goods move quickly and which products are more slow-moving, which helps organizations to determine when it’s time to reorder with greater accuracy. Finally, an all-inclusive inventory management system offers countless benefits to companies including:
- Enable to check Entire Stock transactions
- Allow companies to do lucrative Inventory Evaluation
- Enable to know Stock Cost
- Enable to handle BOM(Bills of Material)
- Enable to do GRN
- Enable to do material level bifurcation,whether it is FG OR Semi FG ,Raw material.
- Enable to handle Delivery Challans
- Enable to increase productivity @ stock levels
- Allow to do physical stock adjustment
- Streamline entire inventory workforce
- Synchronize all inventory internal functions
- Track Product Deliveries
- Reduce material wastages
- Facilitates Inventory analysis
- Improved cash flow
- Better reporting and forecasting capabilities
- Reduction in storage costs (overhead)
- Reduced labor costs
- Reduction in dead stock
- Better organization
- Enhanced transparency
- Improved supplier, vendor, and partner relationship
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Features of Inventory Management System
Barcoding and Tagging
The barcoding module will help you eliminate standard human error, which frequently occurs due to manual data accumulations. Scanning barcodes will provide fast and reliable solutions compared to manual data entry. At the same time, having a barcode system in place will reduce employee training time, as it requires no more than a few minutes to master. The traditional means used to require immense efforts and workforce to train an employee on how to record product details. Barcoding enhances inventory control and tracks things like pricing and product details precisely.
Inventory Tracking
Warehouses need a workforce to keep a tab at every step. Barcode, which we have understood earlier in this article, plays a crucial role in letting you track your inventory accurately. Assets serial number, RFID, and other things important here as these are the things that will let you know real-time data of everything inventory.
Reporting Tools
For any inventory business to be well organized, you need to be updated with real-time data concerning product status, driver’s whereabouts, order status, shipment, and much more. An efficient Inventory Management app comes with the capabilities of integrating various reporting tools and features that make the reporting process easier. This is a crucial feature for any dedicated inventory business.
What is SalesBabu Inventory Management System
SalesBabu Inventory management software keeps a vigil upon the total inflow and total outflow of the raw material which helps you to accomplish all the relevant information pertaining to the stock availability, keep the entire track of your product sold and entire material purchased.
Benefits of SalesBabu Inventory On –Demand
- Tracking @ segregate Stock Levels ,like BOM,FG,Semi FG
- Allow to do Product Level Bifurcation
- Maintain all the GRN’s (Good Receipt Note) on single screen
- Facilitates Returnable GRN’s
- Facilitates Returnable DC’s
- Facilitates Product Sampling
- Track entire Sales Returns by Customer END
- Facilitates Vendor’s Mapping with multiple products
- Get real time Inventory Status & MIS
- Facilitates Integrity & Consistency on entire inventory process loop
- Centralized & Synchronize entire information @ single Screen
- Facilitates Purchase Returns
- Reduce the chance of forgery
- Avoid Stock Mis- Management
- Facilitates inventory Evaluation on single computer screen
- Facilitates Material wastage or Material Scrap tracking
- Facilitates Material Movement Tracking
- Enable to check Internal Inventory levels
Moreover SalesBabu Inventory On- Demand, helps organizations to Streamline & Synchronize entire Stock levels and Inventory work force at single screen. SalesBabu Facilitates organization with such a robust Inventory Management Software,where they can handle entire inventory tasks in lucrative manner ,which can keep track all the Material Movement (Inward & outwards),Handle Bill of Materials,allow to do Material GRN and can manage all the Delivery challan on one platform.
Best Practices for Inventory Management Systems
A high-quality inventory management system can help to boost productivity, but only if you set it up with some basic essentials including like – location names, easy-to-read location labels, unique item identification numbers, units of measure, a software solution that effectively monitors and tracks activity, clear company-wide policies and processes and finally resources who know how to support these policies and processes.
Implementing a feature-rich comprehensive inventory management system can be complicated. It’s not only a question of purchasing a high-quality online inventory management software; it must address the related audience, processes, and technologies from end-to-end. Following best practices to set up a comprehensive, company-wide inventory management system is an investment that will pay for itself again and again through greater efficiency and boost productivity and overall growth of the company.
