The Importance of Effective Multi-Channel Inventory Management

Multi-Level Inventory Management is nothing but streamlining your company’s inventory across various online stores. For instance, if you have an online store for selling shoes at ABC.com and then you sell your shoes at eBay or even Amazon, with multi-level inventory management you can manage your inventory across all these three channels. You do not have to maintain a separate inventory for each and every channel. So, when an item is sold at Amazon, the inventory at ABC.com and eBay automatically get updated. This prevents any kind of overselling or confusion

The multi-channel warehouse management system encompasses the use of software that links all channels in one place. So rather than updating your stock at each channel you can log on to software and update the stock from there. Sales across any channel will be updated with the help of this software.

Now let us see what the advantages of multi-level inventory management are

Time-Saving

By making use of multi-level inventory management, what good thing you are doing is saving one of the most precious commodity and that is time. Now you do not have update stock manually. Also, there is no need to keep checking again and again as the stock is updated at all ends. When you sync all sales channels, you avoid overselling as the sales channels are integrated with the shopping carts at every channel.

Saving money

Another very big benefit of multi-level inventory management is that it can enable you to save money. Multi-level inventory management helps in minimizing stock overheads. Basically, you are paying more than the cost of stock you purchase. Cost of stock encompasses overheads such as staff hiring, rent, powering, the risk of depreciation, etc. Effective multi-channel inventory enables you to predict your stock needs so that you do stocking as per different variables such as seasonal changes, market trends, etc.

Minimizes stock shrinkage and loss

Inventory loss is a big thing in online retail. Loss can be due to the multiplicity of factors such as theft, damage, counting errors, etc. Multi-channel inventory management helps to minimize inventory shrinkage considerably and this can reflect in your profits in a big way. Orders can be tracked in real-time and this results in trimming down the chances of errors in counting and receiving.

Enhanced efficiency

Due to effective multi-channel Warehouse management software, different processes in selling can be automated. This leads to efficiency on an overall level. Different processes that can be automated via multi-level inventory management are order processing, listing creation, printing shipping labels, warehouse storage, stock replenishment, etc. This accelerates the speed of the picking and packing process also.

Errors are minimized

Last but not the least, a very big benefit of effective multi-channel inventory management is a reduction in errors. Basically, the machine is used to do a task which was done by humans thus eliminating any chances of human error. There is no inaccurate reporting happening across channels and this is a very big thing.

So, these are some of the reasons why multi-channel inventory management is a big thing these days.