Building a sustainable, profitable, and scalable e-Commerce business requires a solid understanding of inventory. Inventory management can be a problem for e-commerce, regardless of size, product, or audience segment. Good inventory management is about anticipating and handling inventory problems that will arise. In this blog you will find the top 3 common inventory challenges that can impact the growth and profitability of your e-Commerce, as well as customer experience and retention.
Challenge #1: Understock or Overstock
Whether you sell products online or in-store, you may find yourself in trouble if you don't understand your inventory or your target audience's shopping habits. The situation in which you either cannot meet demand or have overestimated the amount of product you need to keep on hand for a given month. You'll need to store the products you order from manufacturers unless you're dropshipping them. The risk of overselling inventory is that you may delay fulfilment and damage your relationship with the customer who has chosen to purchase your product.
You can update inventory and pricing in real-time across your sales channels and manage your e-businesses using our DSM Suite 2.0+ e-Marketplace Solution. The system flags products as in or out of stock on the site for customers to see what's available. Synchronised all your prices, orders, and inventory levels across your CRM, ERP, store, and e-Marketplaces where you sell.
Challenge #2: Manual system that doesn't scale
e-Commerce startups often find it tempting to track and fulfil orders manually across multiple channels. As you scale your business to meet the growing demands of your customers, it becomes challenging. Data errors can occur when manual processes are used, negatively affecting inventory management.
Take advantage of our DSM Suite 2.0 technology to automate your work process, generate error-free quotes, and analyse customer behaviour. By integrating e-Commerce with backend systems, data can be exchanged between the systems to enable comprehensive data analysis. Your time will be better spent, and your knowledge will be better so your customers can be served better.
Challenge #3: Poor Order Fulfilment
Another common problem is a lack of visibility as product demand grows and order fulfilment management becomes more complex. Customers expect swift order fulfilment, so there is less time for picking, packing, and shipping items. Managing inventory and operations is the key to a rapid order fulfilment process.
Optimise your order fulfilment process using DSM Suite 2.0 to automate processes and analytics to identify fast-moving and slow-moving items. By doing this, you can instantly fulfil a customer's order while reducing any slow-moving stock. Therefore, reducing the need for buffer and safety stock.
Final Thoughts
The No Visibility era is over.
Along with tracking sales and orders from each e-Marketplace channel, you must also understand how each channel affects the inventory. You need to know how your inventory fluctuates over time to boost profits, support growth, and cater to your customers' needs. Analysing the changes in demand over time and predicting what it will look like in the future, reordering products and scaling back on products, and recognising where breakdowns are happening. Making informed business decisions is impossible without a central system that constantly gathers inventory data across multiple systems.
Get a better start with Zooloo. Our team is happy to assist you with your journey towards digital transformation. You will enjoy immense growth opportunities if you partner with the right service provider. Please contact us at sales@zooloo.asia.
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