How many of you all think that running an SME is way easier and less hectic as compared to a large-business organization? Truth be told, that is not definitely the case. In fact, one has to deal with an enormous amount of work even when it is an SME. However, there certainly is a better way to manage this whole lot of work. Guess what it is. Well, all that’s needed is a careful selection of tools.
In case yours is a retail business, then among the many tools available out there, the Inventory Management system is one you can immensely benefit from. The best thing is that you can easily find ‘n’ number off cloud-based software solutions out there, that too at a reasonable price. But, here comes the jeopardy. How do you pick an Inventory system that works best for your business? What features should you go for? Well, to get you out from this big dilemma, here we have mentioned several essential things that should be ensured in a top-class inventory management software.
- Integrations: Certainly the most crucial, isn’t it? As you begin with your selection for an Inventory software, it is vital to ensure that it consists of the Integrations required by your firm. With Integrations, we mean the ability to interface with the third-party platforms. Though the list of add-ons is very long, you still must ensure that the support is provided for these following ones:
- e-Commerce: In case you intend to do business through eBay, Amazon, Etsy, or some other e-Commerce market, then before selecting the system, ensure that the Inventory solution very well integrates with all of these sales channels.
- Shopping cart: There are a few merchants who handle the sales via a shopping cart (like, Volusion, Shopify) directly integrated into their website. These integrations enable the enterprise to sync the orders, sales and stock information between your cart & your Inventory software seamlessly.
- Accounting: Having a plugin for the accounting software is going to save you from the task of manually importing your sales data each time you desire to take a look at the books.
- Shipping: When using software-based shipping software, (such as ShippingEasy, or ShipStation), proper integration will enable you to easily send the shipping info from the inventory software in just a single tap on the screen.
- Payment Processing: Having support for the payment portals such as PayPal, Stripe, Braintree & Square will make things a lot more convenient for you as well as your customers.
Important Note: Most of the software firms will be advertising Integrations as their key feature. So, here, you need to ensure that the ones offered by them match third-party software used by you.
Variants: Is your firm into making many versions of the same product? Like, you are in a shoe-making business, then you must be creating different colors and sizes of a running show. Well, in such a scenario, you would be requiring support for the Variants. This is not usually offered by all the inventory management software packages, so ensure that the system you opt for, offers one.
Contacts: It is quite an essential feature that has been seen in Inventory management software: the ability to store the contacts. This functionality enables the vendors, customers, manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, and retailers to be indexed & quickly recalled whenever required by you. There are a few Inventory software packages that even allow to upload & store documents for each of the contacts, like resale licenses, invoices, & purchase orders. That way you can easily find them in the future when needed. Note that contact management is a very powerful and useful functionality that is able to streamline Inventory end of your firm. So, make sure that it is there is your solution.
Reporting & Analytics: Firms nowadays heavily rely on the Reports & Analytics in order to determine where the stand in the business and market and where they are headed to. A good Inventory system consists of Reporting and Analytics tools which you can access easily whenever needed. It should be easy to handle and understand. It is greatly useful if you can create the custom reports easily, as that way when you are hassling with thousands of rows of data, you would be able to easily trim the excess and unnecessary and focus on the variable that matter to you. This feature should be provided in an Inventory management system absolutely free of charge.
Support: Even though hugely ignored by the small business owners, the Support feature is every bit worth. So, as you think about getting an Inventory solution, it is critical that you take some time out to understand your requirements for the after-support. Have an honest tete-a-tete with yourself and the team and recognize what support you would be requiring. Also find out whether you are good with email-only support, or 24-hours turnaround time. Maybe live-chat works better for you, or maybe a phone call. So, decide first and accordingly choose the desired system. Once you have weighed out what features you absolutely need, you can accordingly begin your search by finding an Odoo service provider who offers an Inventory management software for your business as per your requirements.
Contact us to know more about Inventory Management system. Target Integration have expert who can help you to automate your inventory process.
