Inventory is considered as an important asset to any ongoing business operation. It is always quoted as the current asset of a company balance sheet. With the help of an ERP software, one can efficiently manage the inventory. An ERP enables one to manage their business retail locations/production location and warehouse works with much ease. Without an ERP support, inventory management turns chaotic and cluttered, missing all real-time information necessary for the next action. For example, A supermarket as we know has multiple products of multiple variants managed with a minimum collection of stocks. Often managing the inventory of supermarket turns out hectic as it urges to maintain the balance between the retail store location and warehouse station so that the stock doesn’t get run out. If stock runs out, it directs affects the supply thereby generating the resource loss in business.
In that case, an ERP comes into rescue for managing your inventory in trading or manufacturing sector. Via proper understanding the business requirement and thereby implementing an ERP, one can turn the inventory management into an organized, structured and streamlined form. With ERP systems, one can easily organize the stock items, their quantity through specific identification numbers like serial numbers or barcodes. Also, an ERP enables to check the inventory levels for a particular category of item.
One of the major advantages of choosing an ERP system for your inventory management is that an ERP system equips with reporting mechanism of inventory within the store and warehouse locations. This, in turn, helps the manufacturing department for planning their future production schedules. An ERP enables quick reporting of stock and their status keeping intact all the information necessary for the manufacturing department for timely action. Especially in the food industry, an ERP plays a pivotal role in the real-time movement of stocks from one location to another initiating longer shelf life for the food product and eliminating resource loss like wastage of items.
Inventory management in an ERP thereby helps you to avoid stocking related mistakes and take quick decisions for better internal operations. ERP system today especially the Open Source ERP Odoo has numerous advanced features like double-entry inventory with no stock input, output or transformation, Drop-shipping, Cross-docking, Multi-warehouse adding the potentialities in managing an Inventory within the manufacturing/trading industry.
So, it’s a well-understood fact that, if inventory is properly managed, one can definitely attain the business growth and expansion.
Top 10 Benefits of ERP in Inventory Management.
1. Odoo inventory management is a resourceful module which can be utilized by any business organization irrespective of their size and complexity. Odoo inventory is crafted by fully integrating with other applications like Purchase and Sale for more efficiency. Is also integrated with e-Commerce, Manufacturing and Repairs applications for better management service.
2. Right from preparing the delivery order in simple steps, later controlling and managing the incoming shipments, Odoo inventory proves its efficiency. Odoo inventory management modules take care of all activities like preparing the inventory counts, multiple location management, barcode-based packing, efficient scrap management, stock transfer option etc.
3. With Odoo, the related data like sale, purchase, accounting or manufacturing are placed under one single roof. Therefore warehouse users can count all related inventory details and further inserts them timely for right action. This, in turn, helps the business to track the performance of an employee, thereby give an appraisal or warning depending on their performance.
4. With an Odoo inventory, one can also initiate advanced routing support operations like Drop-shipping, where the delivery of products to the customers are straight from the supplier, Cross-Docking where the incoming material is directly transferred to outbound gates with little to no storage in between.
5. Within the movement of stock, Odoo inventory comes with features like FIFO and LIFO defining the removal strategies within the stock inventory.
6. Pick - Pack – Ship, feature in Odoo inventory Design the order process flow and delivery to customers in one step or several steps: picking, packing, and shipping.
7. The multi-warehouse management facility in Odoo inventory manages all the warehouses with the same system and define replenishment rules between warehouses. The Push & Pull Routes, design your own product routes to automate transfer orders between warehouses or locations.
8. Tracking your product inside and outside the inventory is a challenging task. But Odoo traceability features like ‘Lots Tracking’, ‘Activity Log’, ‘Serial Numbers’, ‘Perpetual valuation’ make it easier for the business industry.
9. One can also do the effective product management in Odoo. Odoo inventory supports several product types that have different behavior: physical products, consumables, services, digital products. It also enables to add as many custom fields as you want on products to handle your business needs.
10. A product will be of a different variant. With Odoo inventory management, one can define multiple level variants in just a few clicks. It creates a matrix based on colors, sizes, attributes, etc. In addition, Odoo also supports multiple units of measures and converts automatically for easy buying.
There are numerous other ERPs in the market like Microsoft Dynamics and SAP. But what makes Odoo stand out from them is their exclusive features. Comparing to Microsoft Dynamics, Odoo Inventory Management has an additional feature called Freight Carrier Integration and Consignee stock management. Odoo Inventory management also has multiple variant support, Up and Down traceability, better barcode support making stand out from ERP like SAP.