If you're like most businesses, you started small. Your time was mostly spent on the front end of your business selling and marketing your product. You spent a lot of your time learning how to perform all of the functions of your business yourself. It was easier then! You weren't selling that much so there was not a lot of information that needed to be collected. In fact, most of the information was stored in your head! Pretty soon you started to grow and all of the activities required more effort. Problem was, you were so busy dealing with your increased sales that you couldn't get to some of the back office functions that needed to be performed. Now you find yourself in a pickle! What to do? You need information to deal with your customers. You need to know what you have, where you have it, how much it cost you and how long before you can get more. You need an Inventory Management Software package!
You need to be able to have the stock on hand to make that sale or know when you expect to receive the product. You need to know when to reorder, how long it will take and how much it will cost. If your product is perishable you need to track expiration dates. You need all of this information made available to you in real time so you can make smart decisions and keep your customers happy. If you can accomplish this efficiently, you will be able to devote more of your time to the activities you enjoy most and that are most important to your business.
With a new inventory management software package, you can automate many of the routine tasks you do every day. You can setup a bar code system to collect data at each step of your process. Working with your supplier, you can input the product bar codes into your software package so that when you receive the product you can collect all of the necessary information with just a swipe. As your product or component moves through your process, you can use the bar code reader to collect all of the status information. The Inventory Management Software package will process all of this information and return it to you in a form you can take action on.
As your business grows, you can simply add more product bar codes into your system. You can also integrate your inventory management software with other business systems including the financial and point of sale systems. This eliminates tons of data entry hours as you will only have to enter information once into your system. You can also link your software to your supplier to automate the ordering and billing functions. The system will also help you eliminate waste as you will always know how much product you have and where it is. This is also a theft deterrent.
There are many types of Inventory Management Software packages on the market today. Some are canned packages that not only manage your inventory, but also handle your accounting and point of sale functions. These canned systems are great and quickest to implement if you are willing to modify your business processes to conform to the software package. Other, more complex systems are highly customizable. These systems will require more effort to setup and will cost more but will be able to conform a bit more to your way of doing things. A well integrated Inventory Management Software package will give your business an edge and position you for future profitable and sustained growth.
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