We would all love a magic eight ball to look into and have it tell us how to improve our inventory planning. Sage has come up with the closest thing to a magic eight ball, working with inventory experts who are willing to share what they’ve learned over decades of working on the problems of optimal replenishment. After talking with these experts the team behind Sage Inventory Advisor has learned three fundamental truths about inventory planning.
- Finding a Balance is the Goal
The first truth is all about balance. All inventory-based companies, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers, are challenged by the competing goals of having just enough stock on hand to meet demand while avoiding warehouses full of excess product. You don’t want to keep customers waiting, but you also don’t want to sit on too much product. Finding a balance is a critical step in inventory planning.
- Wasting Time is Not Efficient
The second truth has to do with the buyers and inventory planners who are stuck in the middle of those competing goals. They inevitably spend too much time, effort, and stress managing the mountains of data required to truly optimize their inventory levels. Putting out fires all the time is simply not an efficient use of time.
- Outdated Tools Cause Profit Loss
The third truth is that most small and medium business are using outdated tools and processes. Profits can suffer as a result. Using outdated tools like spreadsheets, custom reports, and worse can really hurt your inventory management by wasting time and not allowing your management the right data to do their job.
The Cost of Ignorning These Truths
It’s a tricky spot to be in. Too much inventory hurts your business, but not enough inventory can also cause problems. Profit is negatively impacted by the hidden costs of excess inventory for some items. Having excess inventory means working capital is unnecessarily tied up in the warehouse, when it could be used for other profit-driving activities in the business. That excess stock also incurs very real carrying costs, which can be substantial.
Customers are key to a thriving business and not being able to fulfill customer demand on a timely basis can be detrimental. Sometimes the sale may be delayed, but there are many other times when the sale will be lost for good. If this happens on a regular basis, it can mean a lost customer.
Finding a Solution
Any business that manages inventory is more than familiar with this challenge, and many of them try to get by with an inventory spreadsheet to solve their inventory woes. The spreadsheet is just not cut out for the task, and the result is hurting the bottom line. A solution that can help is a true Inventory Management System—a user-friendly app like Sage Inventory Advisor (SIA).
SIA can be a game changer for mid-sized companies that manage inventory. It is extremely cost effective, easy to deploy, easy to use, and specifically designed to help solve the problems of excess inventory and stock-outs once and for all.
To learn more about how Sage Inventory Advisor can help you optimize inventory, watch this quick demo video.
Contact ASI to Start Solving These Inventory Truth Challenges
Sage Inventory Advisor can help you solve the three truth challenges we talked about by giving your company the data they need to make informed decisions regarding your inventory. With streamlined processes and increased efficiency, you can rest assured knowing that you have the information you need to make wise inventory decisions. For more information about what Sage Inventory Advisor can do for your business, contact us today. We’d love to help you discover how you can solve your inventory challenges and achieve greater profitability through an innovative inventory management solution.