Imagine two customers, A and B, checking out your sold-out page. Let A be the regular customer, while B is the seasonal customer. The "sold-out" term affects these two customers in two different ways.
The negative impact will be more on the B customer because he is new, and his first experience with you is not as expected as it would be.
That is what happens when you have poor inventory management.
In a world of 12 million eCommerce businesses, convenience rules and choices overflow while maintaining inventory stays at the core of every business.
In other words, inventory management for eCommerce entrepreneurs is directly proportional to the success they will achieve.
So, to know how you can manage your inventory better to have more satisfied customers, read further.
Skip to:
- Why Do You Need Inventory Management in eCommerce?
- 4 Tips for Effective eCommerce Inventory Management
- How to Incorporate Strategies into Efficient eCommerce Inventory Management
Why Do You Need Inventory Management in eCommerce?
Any successful eCommerce business relies on effective inventory management.
It ensures you have all the products your customers in that specific location might need to prevent stockouts and overstocking.
Here are a few more convincing reasons why you need effective eCommerce inventory management:
1. Improves customer satisfaction
Customer choices and preferences vary from location to location.
It is not always a good idea to sell something at a particular location just because your competitors are selling it in another corner of the state.
Understanding what people might need in that specific location and ensuring that you have them in stock is the best way to sell more and bag some bucks.
So, doing proper research and delivering faster the next time improves the customer experience with your business.
You need efficient eCommerce inventory management and eCommerce customer service to monitor the stock and make it happen.
2. Cost reduction
You must know how your business runs, such as the number of units you sell or your customer preferences.
Losing track of them can pile up materials that never sell out soon. Remember, the investment increases as the storage space doubles while the pilled materials expire soon.
With proper inventory management, you can prevent overstocking, which ties up capital and storage space. It also minimizes the risk of outdated stock, saving you money in the long run.
3. Accurate financial reporting
Understanding where your money comes from and how it goes out is another crucial thing that can lift or push your business down.
No matter how many sales you make in a day, if your financial statements are not updated every time money comes in or goes out, it becomes more challenging to sustain the market.
You can track your business expenses with inventory management tools, including human calculation errors. Efficient management confirms that your balance sheet accurately shows your assets and liabilities.
4. Minimizing satisfaction errors
If your shipment process is not up to par, leading to errors such as sending the wrong items or running out of stock after taking the order, this can direct your business to disasters, especially in the food industry.
Bridging these differences becomes easy with management tools since they update you constantly. Efficient inventory management systems help you reduce shipping errors and maintain your reputation and customer trust.
Read more about customer loyalty.
4 Tips for Effective eCommerce Inventory Management
- Introduce inventory tracking software
- Set safety stock levels
- Forecasting and seasonal trends
- Implement an ABC analysis
Effectively implementing inventory management strategies can lead to improved business and satisfied customers.
Adopting a growth mindset can further amplify the positive outcomes, motivating you to constantly evolve and adapt to new challenges.
Here are a few tips to grow your business by implementing an effective inventory management system.
1. Introduce inventory tracking software
First, you must invest in inventory tracking and management software to effectively manage your eCommerce products.
It helps you gain real-time visibility into your inventory levels, sales, and order history.
These can help you manage your inventories and track your finances better without much effort.
Using these, you can make informed decisions based on data, such as reorder points and lead times, reducing the risk of stockouts or overstocking.
2. Set safety stock levels
You will never know when a sudden spike will be in your sales.
Situations like kids from another town visiting their cousin's home more often in your office locality or people visiting your town a week before the festival begins, can increase the sales you make in a day compared to what you sell on usual days.
Therefore, you need extra materials to meet the demand—items neither less nor more, but enough to meet the additional demand.
While it might increase your carrying costs slightly, it ensures you can meet customer demand, maintaining your reputation and sales.
3. Forecasting and seasonal trends
You must identify the high sales quarter from last year to better equip you with products and items this year. Apart from that, seasons also play a role in eCommerce businesses.
People tend to buy more during the festive seasons, like Christmas and New Year, when the demand for your business could be high.
And here's a golden tip, integrating subscriptions that create the ability to sell products on a recurring basis is a brilliant move.
Not only does it assure a steady flow of revenue even outside those high-demand seasons, but customers absolutely cherish the convenience of receiving their favorite items without the need to manually reorder.
This knowledge will help you adjust your inventory levels to meet anticipated demand during peak seasons, reducing the risk of overstocking or stockouts.
4. Implement an ABC analysis
An ABC analysis categorizes your stock into three groups: A, B, and C.
High-demand and high-value products go to group A. Moderate-value and demand products go to group B, while low-value and demand items move to group C.
Now that you know what works better for you, give your time and extra resources to managing Group A products.
If your existing customers love it, they are more likely to recommend it to their peers. Categorizing your products in the storeroom helps prioritize your efforts and allocate resources more efficiently.
How to Incorporate Strategies into Efficient eCommerce Inventory Management
- Automation
- Regular audits
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Feedback loops
It is not about knowing how to build, but putting the lessons you learned into action, which takes you closer to your eCommerce goals.
Here are a few additional tips for you to put the above-discussed strategies into practice.
1. Automation
Use automation tools and software to speed up your inventory management process.
You can let automation tools trigger you when products in the inventory reach a certain level so that you can avoid human error and save time with improved customer satisfaction.
2. Regular audits
Although inventory management tools provide more accurate information than human-calculated data, they still sometimes need regular checks.
A simple, accidental change can lead to changes in further plans. To avoid this, you can do monthly or quarterly audits, depending on the size of your operation, to ensure data accuracy.
3. Cross-functional collaboration
You have to collaborate with each team in your business to conclude on items in stock.
The sales department provides the sales report, while the marketing department can provide information about about-to-be customers, leveraging technology in supply chain management for greater efficiency.
You can tell how many sales you will make next month by analyzing this data and refilling your inventory accordingly.
4. Feedback loops
Customer feedback is a valuable asset for any business to move forward by working on it.
Ask your customers to give their feedback on your business. It can be about the delivery system, delivery people, products, packaging, and more.
Later, you can use this information to fine-tune your inventory management strategies.
Read more on how to automate your eCommerce business.
Conclusion
Effective inventory management is an essential element of running a successful eCommerce business.
By following the tips mentioned above, you can optimize customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and ensure the accuracy of your financial reporting.
Remember that eCommerce is a dynamic and competitive industry, so staying ahead with efficient inventory management can make all the difference in your success.
Author Bio
Mona is a content marketing specialist with over 4 years of experience who is currently working with SaaSit.in in creating engaging and effective content for various SaaS companies. She likes researching topics related to B2B and SaaS. Email her: Mona@saasit.in
