Inventory Management

What is Inventory Management?

When eCommerce businesses start up, inventory management is usually one of the last things that are thought about. This is mostly because, like starting any business, with eCommerce it is important to focus on other things such as growing the brand and awareness and setting up a website. However, it would be foolish not to look into inventory management. Online retailers should aim to make sure that they are stocking more of the goods that sell best and less of the goods that sell worst and at the same time making sure that there is enough stock to deal with forecasted customer demand at any time. It is very important to get inventory management right, most successful eCommerce businesses invest a lot into their inventories.

Many smaller businesses and entrepreneurs usually start their inventory management with traditional methods such as spreadsheets and paper. Although these methods will work, they will very quickly become unhelpful with spreadsheets becoming really big and difficult to manage and paper copies getting lost and taking up a lot of space. Because of these reasons, some eCommerce businesses often take up a periodic inventory system that keeps track of their inventory changes in consistent intervals. Tracking in intervals can reduce visibility and control over your inventory and makes it harder to track down any errors. More successful eCommerce businesses have realised that it is time to switch to an inventory management system. An inventory management system can track inventory in real time and provides accurate reflections of the level of goods that are in stock at all times. A good inventory management system can also help to track down any errors and will help businesses to come up with methods to fix them. 

SKU Product codes

Stock Keeping Units (SKU) is the base used by inventory management systems to keep everything in check. A good SKU can help to determine the popularity of products and their variants. This information can be used to help businesses to make better marketing decisions and to focus on specific products.