What You Need To Know About Software Inventory Management

Introduction

A software inventory management program helps businesses and manufacturers keep track of their inventory, shipments, and sales. It also helps businesses save money by knowing in great detail what their inventory is like and what product is the most popular. By keeping track of sales and inventory, businesses can keep their shelves stocked with the things that customers are truly interested in.

Step 1

Inventory management started in the middle 1970s with the grocery store retailers. Each product has its own Universal Product Code, or UPC to distinguish it from other products. But, before this system became widely used by retailers, each retailer had its own barcode, thus needing many barcode readers to scan its competitor's products. These made the retailers spend unnecessary money. But there was still the problem of where to put this data once scanned. It took a lot of time and effort to write down on paper each and every piece of inventory and competitors prices, until the early 1980s when the personal computers became popular. By the early 2000s, software inventory management replaced using computerized spreadsheets to input data by grocery retailers.

Step 2

I understand the need for a program for businesses to keep track of inventory. However, as a consumer, I believe advances in these programs allow businesses to keep track of my purchases with their loyalty cards. Every store has a loyalty card that customers can use to get discounted prices off of selected items. Why can't they be that price without having a loyalty card? Without having to know exactly what I purchases on any given day? Why do they need to know that I, personally, enjoy using one particular brand of toilet paper over another one?

Step 3

The purpose of an inventory management software is to reduce costs, track products as they leave warehouses, track inventory, track sales, and to keep track of each step a product makes from an online purchase to delivery at the customer's doorstep.

Step 4

Manufacturers use inventory management software to create work orders and work orders for multi-level jobs, receiving inventory, and shipping a completed product. Using a software program like inventory management software, saves manufacturers money by not overstocking inventory. It also helps warehouses stay organized by being able to group similar products together and to group products by orders.

Step 5

An advance in technology allows some businesses to keep track of inventory through mobile devices. An advantage of software inventory management is that there are stricter securities with these programs and supervisors can delegate certain employees this task of inventory management without the company being put in jeopardy, saving the business time.

Conclusion

The cost of inventory management software and its add-ons is a big disadvantage to many small businesses that are struggling to take off. Not only is this type of software expensive, but also with its intricate programming, businesses must hire people who know hot to run and troubleshoot the software. In the past, software companies could be choosy with who they have as customers. If a company had less than 200 million dollars in revenue, they didn't want them as a customer. Now however, with the economy the way it is, companies cannot afford to turn any business away, big or small.

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