Keep Your Business Running Smoothly this Season with Inventory Management Tools

The holidays will soon be upon us, which triggers seasonal demand, so it’s more important than ever that you have reliable inventory management tools keeping your business running smoothly. It doesn’t do you much good to run an incredible promotion if you’re going to sell out of product early. Consumers’ patience is shorter than ever, and if you don’t have what they want, they’re likely to take their business elsewhere. On the other hand, if you’re left with excess inventory, you’ve got to sell it at a deep discount and/or throw it away when it expires or spoils on your shelves. Inventory management tools can help you keep that fine balance between not enough inventory and too much inventory, even as selling conditions and demand ebb and flow throughout the year.

According to a study commissioned by retail analytics firm DynamicsAction and conducted by IHL Group, retailers lost $634.1 billion due to out of stock items for the year ending in spring 2015. That’s 39 percent higher than in 2012. Excess inventory, meanwhile, cost them $471.9 billion, which represents a 30 percent increase from 2012. These challenges can grow even worse during the holiday months, when consumer demand swells. Inventory levels, values, and locations are ever-changing, so it’s extremely difficult if not impossible for employees to keep track of that data on a timely and accurate basis. And, because this time of year is so busy, manual inventory management practices – namely, Excel spreadsheets and pen and paper – are particularly error-prone. Mistakes aren’t a question of if, but when. If you have several employees maintaining inventory records in Excel, they can’t consolidate their respective data. Duplication of effort is common, as is an oversight or a simple typo.

The bottom line is this: If you’re not using inventory management tools to manage your resources, you’re likely losing significant amounts of time and money. Our competitive retail environment and the power of online peer reviews demands that retailers meet consumers’ expectations and deliver a continually high level of service. With that in mind, inventory management tools allow you to gain deep insight into your business, understand trends and make accurate product forecasts. You’ll keep your customers happy, drastically reduce storage costs and prevent products from languishing on your shelves.

With Asset Panda, you’ll get the most powerful, yet easy to use inventory management system in the world. All you need to track and manage your inventory is the smartphone or tablet you already carry. No additional hardware or software is required, and you can add as many users as you’d like, which in turn saves you money and promotes accuracy, accountability and better communication among stakeholders.

Asset Panda’s user interface is simple and intuitive and requires no special training to master. Features are customizable, so you can organize your data any way you want and create reports, alerts, notifications, security settings, columns, fields and your dashboard according to your unique needs. It’s easy to import and export data into and out of the tool, and integrate it with legacy systems. And Asset Panda is flexible enough to incorporate new technologies as they become available in the future.

Your data syncs with the cloud, giving you real-time access to the information you need to make informed decisions. Ready to get a leg up on the holiday season and help your business reach new heights? Give Asset Panda a try free for 14 days. To learn more or get started, visit assetpanda.com