“My company is too small for inventory management software.” This is something we often hear from small businesses. But how true is it? Are these solutions only good for large enterprises?
Today, small businesses have a significant advantage over those of a couple of decades ago. Technology has revolutionised business, delivering on-demand tools for almost anything, including HR, marketing, logistics, and inventory management. Yet, many small businesses are hesitant to adopt these cutting-edge solutions, especially in inventory management.
Ensuring accurate demand and supply ratios requires seamless inventory management and analysis. While you can use spreadsheets for this, it’s not an effective solution for businesses that want to scale.
At Workhorse, we’re passionate about helping businesses automate their inventory and order management while staying in control of their operations. We believe companies big and small can benefit from inventory management automation — here are just a few ways it can help.
Why companies of all sizes can benefit from inventory management automation
Saves money
An efficient inventory management system helps you maintain the correct stock volume to balance customer demand and cash flow. It easily maps your warehouse space based on product category, expiry dates, and high-selling products — something that a solution like Excel just can’t do.
This way, you can monitor your inventory in real-time while taking advantage of past data to make better decisions, forecast demand, and streamline your operations. This helps you avoid overstocking and minimise product spoilage, cutting down your overhead by up to 10%.
Automation also eliminates manual processes prone to costly errors and downtimes. For example, the software can monitor your exact stock levels and lead times on new orders to determine the ideal point to replenish your stock. Ideally, such deep visibility into your processes keeps you in control of your inventory costs.
Saves time
In inventory management, many tasks and processes are manual, tedious, and repetitive. Over time, these tasks can result in a gridlock problem if your team can’t keep up, hurting customer experience and delivery times. This is even more complicated when your business sticks to using solutions like Excel to manage inventory.
Thanks to automation, tasks like order management, demand forecasting, and order reordering can be automated, saving your team lots of time and letting them focus on other, vital areas of your business. Time spent manually entering numbers in a spreadsheet and counting stock can be a thing of the past.
Inventory management automation can also consolidate processes to improve business efficiency, including checking stock levels, filling orders, and forecasting. This makes it easier to work on everything at once, giving you more time to spend on productive and revenue-generating tasks.
Reduces errors
Humans aren’t perfect, and we all make mistakes. Unfortunately, little mistakes in manual inventory management can turn into big problems.
Automated inventory management eliminates the potential for human error in most processes, minimising the likelihood of errors and ensuring accurate inventory counts. You can also use technology like scanners and barcodes to help automate things even further.
Automated systems also feature monitoring systems that can alert you if there’s anything wrong. Automation empowers your business with smart solutions that deliver real-time 24-hour visibility into your processes to avoid or minimise costly errors.
Frees up your team (big or small) to focus on what really matters
Traditional inventory management can get disorganised. And without adequate monitoring, this can impact productivity, resulting in product shortages, poor delivery times, or even overstocking.
Digital transformation in your warehouse automates your processes to eliminate manual and repetitive tasks. It can restructure and re-organise your warehouse to improve efficiency and productivity and increase inventory accuracy and visibility.
All these improvements frees up your workforce to focus on other important tasks like customer experience, marketing and sales, admin, order fulfilment, and growth strategies. As a small business, you can benefit from the extra valuable work hours to scale your business, expand into new markets, and engage more with customers.
More importantly, reduced human input lowers labour costs and improves workplace safety. Crowded warehouse spaces and extended work shifts increase the risk of injury, so automation can help keep your business and your workforce healthy and safe.
Accelerate your business with inventory management automation
The modern business environment is dynamic, and inventory automation is a great way to stay current and competitive.
Spreadsheets may work for a while, but as you grow they’re not going to cut it. As customer expectations shift and change, businesses need to redefine their internal processes to serve their customers better.
Whether you’re a business of one, have a small team, or have a warehouse full of dedicated workers, inventory management automation can help your business grow.
That’s what we’re all about at Workhorse. We provide an innovative inventory management software solution that moves you beyond spreadsheets and provides actionable insights in real time. Our configurable platform can be tailored to include exactly what you need and nothing you don’t. And our unique approach to onboarding will help your team get up and running in no time at all.
Reach out to our team today to learn more about Workhorse and get a demo.