Best Features in A Warehouse Inventory Management Software
Warehouse Inventory Management Software
Effective inventory management is no simple task, as you are well aware. This is particularly true if your company’s activities are managed manually. Fortunately, there are options that can help you handle your inventory more effectively, saving you time and money. Inventory management software is a collection of tools that helps companies keep track of their inventory.
The primary aim of the inventory management process is to be aware of where your inventory is at any given time and to have a clear image of the quantities you have in order to accurately control the inventory levels. A good understanding of the inventory management process aids a company’s long-term success. Stock that is well organized automatically establishes supply-chain management. Keeping track of inventory by hand can be time-consuming and challenging.
With that in mind, here are some agree of the noted features, incentives, and forms of inventory management software to assist small to large companies in maximizing their benefits.
But first, let’s see what is WMS.
What Is A Warehouse Management System?
A warehouse inventory management system is a must-have for any company that deals with inventory. It helps you to keep track of thousands of things, reorder goods quickly when they run out, and ensure that you never have too many or too few on hand.
All of this boosts your profits and enhances your consumer relationships by ensuring you can deliver what they want when they want it. This type of system can be used to help you make the most effective use of your resources across the board, whether you have a single warehouse or several warehouses.
Prominent Features of Warehouse Management Software
Traditional order management software (OMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have simple warehousing capabilities, but many businesses quickly outgrow them. So, apart from inventory and order management, the key benefit of the warehouse control system (WMS) is that it includes other facets of the supply chain, such as labor management, financial management, reporting, and more.
Inventory Management
You can have several sub-categories and functions in the Inventory Management module to get real-time reports for all necessary inventory. The automated shortage reports assist in rapidly and effectively resolving any issues; warnings and reports enable you to efficiently address any unfortunate inventory mishaps. Warehouse control software allows you to expand your ecommerce footprint across many locations with ease.
Inventory Tracking
It is important to keep track of the inventory at all times. Serial numbers, RFID tags, barcodes, and other IDs can all be used to monitor inventory in many material handling technology systems. These tools make it simple to process inventory data as soon as it arrives in your warehouse. Such a system also conducts a thorough audit of all product transfers. This is particularly critical in industries that deal with perishables or consumables. If you ever need to recall a product, traceability allows you to do so only for the items that are affected. If you don’t have traceability, you risk having to recall all of your products, whether they’re affected or not, and losing a lot of money.
Barcoding & Tagging
The barcoding module aids in the elimination of common human error, which is often caused by manual data accumulation. When compared to manual data entry, scanning barcodes provides fast and accurate results. Getting a barcode system in place often cuts down on employee training time since it only takes a few minutes to learn. Traditional methods required a lot of time and effort to train an employee on how to record product information.
Order Management
The majority of vendors have an inventory management system to assist you in managing your sales orders. Users can configure pricing, submit quotes, monitor orders, and manage returns using this tool. Orders are synced with inventory levels, products are marked for shipment, multichannel sales are supported, and auto-adjustments are made to ensure profitability. In order to increase and sustain customer loyalty, order management is a must-have function.
Inventory Alerts
The days of manually tracking vital stock data and wasting precious business time and resources are long gone. What if it was notified directly through a low inventory alert? With the right inventory warning function, you’ll be able to get an email or SMS alert that alerts you to any potential problems that might arise in the future. Important aspects of running a company accurately, such as what goes out; what comes in; shipping status, problems warnings, and so on, can be easily handled by getting consistent inventory alerts.
Reporting Tools
To run a successful inventory company, you must have real-time information on product status, driver location, order status, shipping, and much more. The ability to integrate different reporting tools and features into an effective Inventory Management app makes the reporting process simpler. For any hardcore inventory company, this is a must-have feature.
Deployment
Since not every device supports both implementation methods, you’ll need to decide which is best for your business before narrowing down your options. Cloud-based products usually have less sunk costs, have more visibility, and keep the data secure.
However, many businesses prefer on-premise solutions due to privacy issues or market enforcement requirements. SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS are only a few examples of cloud deployment approaches. Some products can have more specific deployment choices, so it’s important to understand the differences.
Mobile Support
This feature influences the hardware you’ll use to manage your processes and whether you’ll be able to do so remotely. Many systems have a mobile website that allows users to log in from any device. Check to see whether a vendor provides a native application if you use tablets, computers, or other mobile devices. It’s also important to note that mobile support is always OS-specific. While most vendors strive to support all common platforms, this isn’t always a priority. As a result, it’s important that the inventory app you buy runs on your current hardware.
Conclusion
A warehouse inventory management system is a software solution that assists companies in keeping track of their warehouse inventory (s). It enables companies to easily and precisely:
- Pick, pack, and ship orders
- Order new items
- Receive inventory
- Reconcile orders
- Cycle count
- Track shipments
By now, you should have a better understanding of inventory management system features and what your company would need. After you’ve determined your needs, you’ll need to find the right inventory management software for your business.