ERP systems help companies automate and streamline operations, but how can they tackle the problems posed by inventory management?
Inventory management can be challenging, especially when selling from multiple channels, but minimising overstock while avoiding stock-outs can be essential to keeping your business afloat.
Here are some inventory management challenges and how a suitable ERP system can help to tackle them:
Typically, inventory management involves data entry when recording items’ locations at various points in the inventory. This is generally done using stock books, ledgers, stock cards or bin cards.
Using these methods, users manually count stock or register items individually, leaving room for errors that reduce the accuracy of any stock levels.
Utilising a suitable ERP system, much of the data entry can be automated, helping to eliminate opportunities for manual data entry errors to occur, with the resultant improvement in accuracy allowing for more informed inventory planning while also making it easier to maintain stock levels.
Inventory management often requires strong cohesion between multiple departments in the business. When balancing stock, businesses need their sales and procurement teams to work together, and both the sales and procurement teams work closely with the finance team.
A correctly configured ERP system lets all the departments in the business draw data from the same place, eliminating discrepancies between per-department tools and bringing the software that departments use individually onto the same platform, ensuring compatibility and integrations between departments’ systems.
Knowing a sensible stock level to keep is essential. However, many external factors can affect the supply and demand of products.
Using an ERP system can give you greater insights into historical seasonal demand, among other patterns, that can help the business plan its inventory on real data and put its inventory plan into action more efficiently using the ERP’s other automation tools.
Stock traceability is integral to many inventory management systems and is even legally required in some territories. If a recall is issued, tracing a product or product line across the supply chain may be necessary.
An ERP system with integrated inventory management can be configured to record each product’s journey through the supply chain by serial number. This can allow any product’s journey to be traced in the event of a recall or other problem.
Inventory value is a significant part of many businesses’ assets. This makes accurate stock tracking essential for financial compliance and requires more work from the finance team.
When integrating inventory management with an ERP system that includes financial management tools, the transactions from the inventory management system can be automatically included in the financial reporting process without incurring any inaccuracies from manual entry.
Oracle NetSuite is the premier pre-built ERP system, providing businesses with the tools they need to grow. NetSuite’s inventory management module can help businesses tackle inventory management challenges.
NoBlue2 is an established ERP provider and has implemented solutions based on Oracle NetSuite since 2011. Contact us if you’d like to discuss what a NetSuite-based ERP system can offer your company.
Once you’ve made the decision to move on from spreadsheet accounting or to upgrade your legacy ERP system, how do you choose the right ERP software?
When you manage your whole business through an ERP system, you’re able to get a bird’s-eye view of your business, and better understand company-wide impacts of decisions, plans and unforeseen changes. This coordinated view is a real boon for companies looking to grow and to increase efficiency.
It’s essential to quantify the value and expected returns from implementing a new ERP system like NetSuite. After all, any new IT system is a substantial business expense, requiring a compelling business case to gain buy-in from stakeholders.
As businesses strive for efficiency, they are increasingly turning away from on-premises technology and moving to the cloud. As testament to this shifting trend, statistics indicate that cloud ERP is forecast to grow at more than 17% between 2022 and 2028.
When you manage your whole business through an ERP system, you’re able to get a bird’s-eye view of your business, and better understand company-wide impacts of decisions, plans and unforeseen changes. This coordinated view is a real boon for companies looking to grow and to increase efficiency.
One of the less-shouted-about benefits of being a NoBlue2 customer is access to our free, bi-monthly Customer Roundtable events