Inventory Management
It is important to discuss the basic factors related to inventory management before we directly dive into the benefits of ERP for inventory management. So, we can first check what are the operations and processes involved in inventory management? Well, it is nothing very complicated from the peripheral view. Inventory management is the organization and management of the inventory of a business and the stock of the products.
But it may not seem that simple when we dive into it. Instead, every aspect of the product and stock management including the tracking of stock, replenishment of stock, tracking of demand, overseeing the pattern of orders, storage management and managing the right quantity of the product based on demand and requirement, cost management, and everything else falls under this simple term inventory management. What not, the management of scrap, expired products, serial number, maintenance of stored products, and the movement of a stock based on the date of manufacturing and expiration also come under the inventory management tag.
And yes, without proper inventory management support you may frequently run out of stock of a product or your inventory may experience an excess quantity of a particular product that is not of much interest to the customers. Wasting money and storage space for unwanted products and shortage of investment to purchase products with huge demand will certainly affect our business. So, always get away with all these hurdles and troubles by embracing an ERP system that can help you track all your activities and products with a click.
Set aside your apprehensions about raw material shortage for manufacturing or product shortage for sale operations. A suitable ERP can help to save money and retain your customers. It can also assure you the best support to improve your reputation.
Benefits of using ERP to manage inventory
Inventory is an essential part of the manufacturing business. The same way inventory is required for retail and wholesale businesses and other operations. Here, we can take the example of the manufacturing business as it requires the most complicated Inventory management support. Choosing a competent ERP will help the business to ease the activities and regulate the stock movements. Instead of spreadsheets, we can make use of the cloud-based platform for storing the details. It will also help the use of artificial intelligence to minimize errors and speed up activities. We can avoid the loss of information, missing files, and forgotten entries using ERP support.
ERP systems will surely help the business to automate replenishment and other activities. Integration support with other tools will also enhance the business operations. Inventory will get integrated with manufacturing, accounting, and sales tools for interdepartmental coordination.
Highlights of ERP for Inventory management
· Keep track of stock
· Efficient management of sales and purchase activities
· Efficient storage management support
· Multiple-warehouse management
· Payment gateway management
· Integration with other ERP tools to ease operations
· Artificial intelligence assisted support
· Support to plan and replenish stock
· Avoid excess stock
· Maintains minimum stock
· Control financial operations
· Logistics and shipping management
· Accurate inventory data
We can check the benefits of using ERP for inventory management in detail.
Easy to plan replenishment orders
Inventory management software will help us to manage the replenishment operations with a few clicks. We can directly use the replenishment option and replenish the quantities. This is highly useful for the manufacturing industry as we can ensure that our raw materials never run out of stock and the manufacturing process is never interrupted. We can set the minimum stock level and maximum stock level and can generate orders to replenish the stock. We can either use auto-replenishment or use manual replenishment options. Order can be managed for single-time delivery and multiple deliveries of the items. Advanced product purchase options to produce products at a reduced market rate are also possible with this feature.
Product management and tracking
Every inventory will maintain the stock of a number of products and product management is an important part of inventory management. ERP systems support the creation and management of products and product variants. The product can be anything including the raw material, semi-finished product, machines, or the finished product. The product creation can be used to record the products purchased from the vendor and products manufactured at the business. ERP tool will also support us to manage the serial numbers and lot numbers for the product to ease the tracking of the product. This will help us to track defective lots and batches. We can also ensure the tracing of the movement of raw material from the inventory to the work center and the movement of the product from the work center to the inventory.
Manage surplus stock
The majority of the ERP tools support forecast management and this will help us to identify the actual demand and forecasted demand for a product. ERP tools will easily alert you about the surplus stock of a product. It will also help us to analyze the cost of the material and the usability of the product. It will help us assess if the purchase was economical or not. With quick surplus management support, we can return the product or diversify the use of the stock to avoid loss.
Easy to manage inventory adjustment
With ERP support we can manage inventory adjustment. We can change the position of a product in the inventory based on requirements. With ERP-supported inventory adjustment, the approval and creation of transactions become simpler. We can also manage the process in an efficient way. Inventory adjustments can be made for different products and update the quantity. ERP will enable the business to update the stock of the product and manage the unit quantity. The shifting of the product from one warehouse to another and checking the availability of the product in any of the warehouses is possible with software support.
Report management
Inventory management tools can be of great support to analyze inventory figures. We can manage the operations with ease and generate reports quickly. It also supports the periodical analysis of the operations in the warehouse. We can also generate inventory reports; forecast reports, etc. with ERP support.