Inventory plays a crucial part in any business operation dealing with merchandise goods. This ensures that an organization has adequate raw materials to sustain production and enough finished products to meet the demand of the market.
A survey conducted by NetSuite identifies some of these major challenges, including supplier mistakes, inaccurate shipments, disconnected systems, and poor estimates and demand forecasting.
About a tenth of the respondents listed supplier errors such as the delivery of incorrect items as the top inventory management issue. This can actually be avoided by monitoring supplier consistency and order accuracy. Businesses will then be able to determine the reliability of suppliers and retain the ones that provide consistent performance.
Meanwhile, about 22 percent of the survey respondents point to delayed shipments as a result of lack of visibility as the biggest challenge for their business. To address this, the organization should gain inventory visibility that shows the stock levels and product descriptions.
Another serious challenge is outdated systems that do not reflect real-time data. One study shows that 43 percent of small businesses still resort to manual inventory that is vulnerable to time lags and fails to capture all the numbers.
An automated solution can easily fix this problem. Today, inventory management platforms have centralized, cloud-based databases that provide accurate, automatic inventory updates and real-time data support.
Meanwhile, most respondents of the NetSuite survey identify poor demand forecasting as the top challenge that results in either shortage of raw materials, lost sales, or excess inventory. The key to a sustainable business operation is to have the right level of inventory, at the right time, and the right price.
Modern inventory management systems now incorporate demand forecasting tools that accurately predict consumer demand. This avoids cases of underestimates or overestimates, both of which can impact the financial side of the business.
NetSuite offers inventory management tools and features that help organizations in terms of tracking inventory, choosing the right vendor or supplier, ensuring correct shipments, having a reliable system that accurately captures real-time data, and precise demand planning.
Such powerful inventory management is a part of NetSuite’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that provides insight into stock levels and makes it visible across the organization in real time. It provides organizations a single, real-time view of inventory and demand, keeping handling costs manageable while meeting customer expectations.
NetSuite provides cloud-based inventory management solutions for businesses of any size. Its features include multiple location planning, warehouse and fulfillment management, automated stock replenishment, lot and serial tracking and cycle counting which all lead to smooth business operation and increased cash flow.
https://www.netsuite.com/blog/where-does-it-hurt-top-inventory-management-pain-points