Inventory is a livelihood for every organization working in the wholesale space. Certain factors, such as where to source goods from, what inventory to buy, and how to reach customers to sell products, are crucial factors you must consider while managing the growth of your organization. To sell inventory, you must have to manage and track inventory. However, other factors that could assist your customers in getting their desired products are packing & shipping, streamlined picking, multiple warehouses, and multiple sales channels.
Hence, using the right inventory management software for wholesale is the most appropriate way to manage your wholesale organization. If you are still trying to decide which tool is most suitable for your organization, look at this article. Here we have made a consolidated list of essential tools for your wholesale inventory management solutions.
ERP Software
Software for inventory management offers features for controlling inventories from purchase to sale. Watch for capabilities to handle numerous units of measure, serialized items, reorder points depending on lead times, inventory counts, barcode scanning, warehouse transfers, and bin and shelf locations, even though solutions will vary in functionality. To produce buy orders for new products, manage backorders, handle RMAs, and create sales orders, think about inventory management software with integrated accounting capabilities, such as an ERP system. ERP software also enables the reporting of data from many departments, such as sales by customer or sales by product by date.ERP tools are also referred to as the backbone of inventory management, where different functionality can be integrated with a single platform to control your business and inventory.
Order Management System
An Order Management System is one of the most revolutionary software that enables you to manage your orders throughout your inventory. It tracks and monitors all the information and processes, such as inventory management, fulfilment, order entry, and post-sales services. It offers visibility to both the buyers and the business. I also enable you to have real-time insight into the inventories.
Wireless Barcode Scanning
A large warehouse makes it easier to pick products when they are organized by bin and shelf position. Users can scan products at the source using wireless barcode scanning, which simplifies the selection, packing, and shipping processes. During the picking process, barcodes are scanned so that users may quickly spot and fix inventory shortages or picking mistakes. Users occasionally have the option to select alternatives or mark items as back-ordered. The order is updated in real-time since wireless barcode scanning can be integrated with your ERP system. iOS devices like the iPod and iPad support wireless barcode scanning, frequently less expensive than standard portable scanners.
Mobile Sales App
Inventory control is crucial to sales, mainly when using several different sales channels. A wholesale inventory management solution that can handle inventories in the field is necessary for businesses that hire outside sales representatives or routinely visit trade shows. This system and your back-end ERP solution have live links enabling real-time inventory information availability. This results in faster product shipping because orders placed in the field do not need to be entered again upon returning to the office. You can sell inventory through a variety of channels at the same time, so you will be able to handle having wrong inventory levels when you’re away from the office and warehouse.
Lot Tracking
Although not required in every industry, in those that it is, lot tracking is an integral part of inventory management. Lot tracking or batch tracking allows a business to track specific lots (or batches) or products from the supplier to the customer—lot tracking records which customers received particular lots of products and when they were received. Lot tracking also records the date and supplier of the items purchased and manages product expiry dates. As you can tell, this type of wholesale inventory management functionality is essential in specific industries and when dealing with products such as food and pharmaceuticals. Lot tracking also helps reduce the impact of a product recall in that only the affected product – identified by lot number – gets recalled.
Document Management
To conveniently capture, preserve, and retrieve documentation linked to specific commodities, document management is a crucial component of wholesale inventory management. Specifications, warranties, or maintenance records fall under this category. Document management enables users to scan documents, collect data, and generate customized workflows by filling out fields in your system. While communicating with clients and suppliers in the field or internally, users can quickly obtain documents from the system. With just a press of a button, you may access all the information about an inventory item, eliminating the trouble of storing paper documentation. Users are supposed to use a document management system to process and store documents before accessing the data inside the ERP.
Conclusion
You can make your wholesale business profitable by integrating the practical wholesale approach. Your focus should be on using the best wholesale customer order management software available in the market. These small initiatives are just what you require today to boost your organization’s growth. Tracking your inventory with spreadsheets or excel can be a time-consuming task for your organization, and there are possibilities that you might end up making errors that further waste your precious time.
