Every business owner knows how important it is to have solid inventory data, especially nowadays. Suppose the Coronavirus has affected your business? Just a hypothetical scenario. Now let’s pretend you’ve cut production of your products in half. Based on your inventory numbers, you are making all the right choices. There’s just one issue: your inventory projections were way off. You have much more supply than demand and it’s costing your business during a stressful time. If you’ve experienced something like this, you’re not alone.
3 Ways to Grow Profits with Inventory Accuracy
Create a system for quality control
Identify and address customer concerns
Evaluate inventory accuracy
The average retail business in the U.S. has an inventory accuracy rate of 63%. Imagine the added yearly profits for a company if that number increased to 75%.
That’s the kind of difference a business owner can see by simply changing the way they think about inventory. Below are some tips to help get you started:
Create a system for quality control. A system fully dedicated to monitoring asset quality control, but it should also fit nicely into the flow of your business.
Let’s say your company is responsible for transporting baked goods. You want to have a reliable system that tells you when and where your bread and muffins are at risk for spoilage. Those spoiled muffins were once available for sale. They cost a business money when customers do not buy them. With a better inventory accuracy system, retailers can reduce the potential of unsaleable inventory by adopting a better strategies to know what you have and don’t have.
Identify and address customer concerns. Customers likely have similar concerns about your products
Evaluate inventory control
No customer wants to buy spoiled bread and nor do you want to sell it. If customers actively express concerns about an unexpected issue, make sure they have nothing to worry about. Back to the baked goods example.
If a customer says they are worried about tampered bagels, assure them by displaying how you enforce workplace safety and prep rules. The signage makes everyone feel better about the quality and care you take. That means more customer trust, which leads to more loyalty and sales.
If you are reading this article you probably already started doing this. Which is fantastic. But there might be an opportunity to improve your current process even more.
Are you settling for “good enough”, even though you can do better?
Are you using a process that makes one or two things easier for inventory management, but ignoring other parts of the inventory to customer journey?
Are you spending time counting or entering information?
How might these changes improve profitability or customer experience? Can these improvements lead to 20 or more percent in productivity? At the end of the day, you want to remove uncertainty. Building better customer relationships comes by delivering value to customers. Word of mouth is the is a powerful growth engine for retailers. Trustworthy relationships are established by consistently meeting customer expectations.
What is the one enhancement you can change today that will lead to better communication and less friction in the inventory accuracy and monitoring process?
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