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Good Order Management Is Essential to Streamlined Inventory

Matt Smith
February 26, 2018
Advance shipping notice, Fishbowl Inventory BlogStreamlining your inventory and making sure it is well managed can be challenging and complicated, especially if your wholesale business is growing quickly. As more retail orders come in, stock levels start requiring religious monitoring. In times like these, managing your inventory using pen and paper (or even spreadsheets) just doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to come up with other ways to streamline your inventory management without it being a drain on your resources. Of course, the best solution is to use the right technology, like cloud-based online inventory management software, that will enable you to keep track of your stock and provide you with real-time inventory updates. But did you know that the way you manage your orders is also super important? How you handle your ongoing and upcoming orders can help you achieve an inventory system that runs smoothly. Good order management lets you predict your future demand, gives you better visibility over your stock, and provides you with a bigger picture of your sales trends.

YOU CAN PREDICT YOUR FUTURE DEMAND

Good order management means you can accurately forecast your retail orders, which is crucial in streamlining your inventory. When you’re able to forecast how many orders you’ll receive in a month, you can prevent overstocking because you can store just enough for a specific product or a particular client. This minimizes your costs, too. You no longer have to rent more space to store your items and you won’t have stock sitting on your shelves for so long that it passes it use-by date and becomes unusable or unsellable. Most importantly, forecasting helps you provide your customers with the product that they want at the time they want it. Since you can predict what customers are going to order from you in the next couple of months, you can prepare your stock. The result? You’ll be able to fulfill all your orders on time and without stress. What’s more, forecasting isn’t only good for your inventory management; it’s healthy for your cash flow, too. All the data you get from your forecasts will help you create a better budget.

YOU CAN HAVE BETTER VISIBILITY OVER YOUR STOCK

Inventory issues, like overstocking, understocking, and incomplete orders, can be addressed quickly with good order management. Since you’re keeping an eye on your ongoing orders and making sure they are all organized, you can monitor your inventory levels. You can easily identify if you’re already running low on a particular ingredient or product and you can get rid of unused items that are taking up valuable shelf space.

YOU CAN GET A BIGGER PICTURE OF YOUR SALES TRENDS

This is the best part about good order management – you can clearly see which products are in high demand, what’s selling, and what isn’t. Knowing your sales trends can help when you’re replenishing your inventory so you know which goods you still need to produce and which ones you can remove from your range. With good order management you will always be providing your customers with what they want, when they want it. In the cutthroat world of food and beverage, having seamless business processes in place will put you well ahead of your competition. Good order management can help streamline inventory, especially if you have a mobile ordering app like Ordermentum in place. Ordermentum eliminates the stress that can come with managing multiple customer orders manually. Its simple dashboard allows you to manage and edit orders from a single place. Your retail orders will sync with your system and appear in the dashboard in real time with no manual data entry needed. Even better, the app automatically integrates with your current inventory system to ensure your data is always up to date. It will show you if you still have sufficient stock for a particular product or if there are any items that need replenishing. As always, using the right technology will save you time and money. If you’d like to know more about Ordermentum and see how it can help streamline your order and inventory management, visit www.ordermentum.com.