Inventory turnover is important for many reasons, with the main one being that so many businesses have so much money tied up in inventory. Excess inventory that isn’t sold cuts into profits.
Another problem with excess inventory is that consumer tastes change. What was once a hot item may not be so in six months, and you don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of products that nobody wants to buy. Furthermore, slow-moving inventory takes up valuable space and can make warehouse operations less efficient.
Effective management of inventory maximizes inventory turns while minimizing problems with insufficient inventory, ensuring your customers can get what they want, while keeping excess inventory in check. One of the best tools for ensuring healthy inventory levels and adequate inventory turns is the automated workflow. Here’s how automated inventory management workflows help keep inventory turns on pace.
From Receiving to Shelf Presentation
Your marketing team works hard to ensure that once products hit shelves, they sell quickly. But what about getting those products off the trucks and onto the shelves? With the right workflow software, your business can design receiving and stocking workflows that don’t put undue burden on receiving and stocking staff, yet collect all the data you need to know what you have, where it is located, and when it is sold.
Inventory sitting in storage that has not been properly accounted for leads to waste, lack of storage space, and less data with which to track inventory and plan properly. The right automated workflows prevent these problems.
Workflows to Track Inventory Automatically
When each item is tracked from the time it leaves the delivery truck until it is sold to a customer, you automatically collect the data you need to determine how quickly products sell, how frequently you need to restock, and what percentage of items are lost due to damage or theft.
It’s similar to tracking the money in your bank account, in that knowing how much comes in, where it goes, and where it’s wasted is the key to managing what you have to the best of your ability. Inventory tracking workflows are indispensable to properly taking care of your business’ inventory.
Benefits of the Workflow Powered Inventory System
When you design automated workflows with the intent of improving inventory turns, you experience several benefits:
- Security is better, because you track the movement of items through the entire retail cycle
- Accuracy and efficiency improve, because products can be tracked conveniently with barcodes, avoiding the potential for manual data entry errors
- More inventory turns help keep physical inventory levels to just what is needed
- Labor hours handling and tracking inventory drop
- Efficiency gains and lower error rates increase profitability
You don’t have to operate a big box store to enjoy the advantages of automated workflows. Even the smallest computer repair business, florist, or day spa can manage inventory with skill, as long as the right workflow software is part of the solution.
PerfectApps is workflow software designed to scale perfectly for all business sizes. With PerfectApps, you can create custom forms and workflows without any programming, designing workflows that account for and track your inventory at every stage. As a result, your business can keep inventory turnover on track, avoid excess inventory, and manage orders for consistent, smooth business operation. If you’re interested in learning more about PerfectApps and how it can help your business, we invite you to contact us at any time.
