How To Find An Inventory Software Solution That Fits Your Business Needs?

In case you are looking for an inventory software solution, you most probably will go on the internet and search for it online. This search will give you a ton of information, making your decision rather confusing than simple.

Hence, we are providing you with some tips that can make your decision process simpler and you can settle on the best fitting solution for our business.

What is an inventory software solution?

An inventory software solution is a management tool that is built with a combination of technology, processes, and procedures to enable monitoring, tracking, and maintenance of inventories. These solutions enable you to manage and organize your products, raw materials, and finished goods.

Why it’s important to have a credible inventory software solution?

• It can track incoming & outgoing inventory without any human support
• Order fulfillment is possible through automation
• Smooth warehouse management
• Build customer loyalty.

However, you cannot choose any random inventory management solution for your business. You must have a checklist that you have created as per your business goals and your expectation from the inventory solution.

This checklist must include the following questions apart from your objective-specific queries.

What are your business challenges?

Irrespective of the business management solution you want to integrate into your operations, you must determine your business goals and challenges and decide which type of inventory solution is right for you.

Have you outgrown your outdated inventory management or ERP system?

Is your business growing faster than your expectation?

Are you expanding your area of services or plan to expand in near future?

Is your business growing slower than your planning?

Do you often run out of stock or end up overstocking?( Inventory overstock and understock)

Are your inventory levels inconsistent throughout your sales channels?

How do you keep track of inventories at the present?

Are you facing human errors?

Is your current inventory management technique efficient?

Thinking through such questions concerning your existing challenges will help determine your pain points and decide the functionality your inventory software must have to make your inventory management simpler and error-free.

Are you looking for server-based or cloud-based inventory management system?

Though cloud-based inventory solutions are considered by many modern businesses, there are companies that prefer to rely on on-premise or server-based management systems.

When you start your search for an inventory software solution, you must ask yourself whether your business would get benefited from a server-based or cloud-based inventory software solution.

Are you ok with incurring expenses of owning the software and server on location, or do you want to avoid large capital expenditures by adopting a cloud-based solution? Or do you want to take a software on a monthly subscription model? You better compare your options and match them with your business needs, so that you get a solution that is not just cost-effective but is suitable to your business operations and goals too.

Buy an inventory solution that matches your management policies?

Your inventory management policy decides the flow of your products, how you monitor and track costs, and how would you stop or reduce losses or shortages. A well-defined inventory policy ensures maximum efficiency of your supply chain and inventory fulfillment processes. Your inventory policy has to be in line with your company’s growth and so does your inventory solution.

You must be aware of the product cost, handling needs, and other policies so that you can decide what inventory software is best fitted to your business.

What all features you need that fits your business need?

The right software fits your budget and does what you want it to do. This means you have to scrutinize its scalability, ability, and quality and of course the cost of deployment and the price of the software itself.

Also you should have clear idea on the below questions before evaluating an inventory management system

Do you need RFID tags, serialization features, or bar codes?

Is there any specific requirements you need to meet as per your industry standards?

Do you need real-time monitoring of inventories in terms of their availability?

In short, you must choose an inventory solution that would offer you positive ROI, customer satisfaction and streamline your business operations better without losing track of data and without causing human errors.