What is inventory management and why is smart purchasing module important?

Are you a big corporate business, or maybe a small retail shop, or even a small fast-food restaurant in the neighbourhood?

What is the common thing between these different businesses?

Well, they might have many similarities and differences, but one thing should be certainly common is a good and reliable inventory management system.

What is an inventory management?

An inventory management is the basis for any successful business, especially in retail.

It is the process of ordering, handling, storing and tracking your business inventory as per this article.

Why is inventory management this important to businesses?

Imagine you own a restaurant and a customer orders a salad to find out that you’re out of lettuce or fries, or salt or any condiment.

Or picture having stored too much of an item that it reached its expiry date without being used?

Well, inventory management keeps an eye on the out-of-stock and over-stock equation, meaning that after all it keeps you in control of your operations.

And when we talk over-stock and out-of-stock inventory, we also talk customer service because this issue directly affects customers and their needs’ satisfaction.

Actually, it all starts with a good understanding of your business, its needs and the demand of your customers.

Then this knowledge of customers is reflected in inventory and ordering patterns.

Have you ever wondered why do you need to a smart purchasing and inventory module in your business?

What does it do to your business and what is it its value?

Forecasts demand

So, say that you are in shortage and you need to replenish your stock, a smart purchasing and inventory module tells you when a product will stockout according to projected demand numbers and sales reports.

It also shows you what to order and what not to order depending on these reports.

Reorders' alerts

A smart purchasing and inventory module alerts you about the time of reordering certain products.

Let’s say a certain product reaches below a predetermined level, the smart module alerts you that it’s time to place an order especially because you can’t manually keep track of all the products in your store and their inventory.

Organizes your special orders

Not all products in your business are created equally. You need some of the products on daily basis with a high turnover while others move at a slower pace.

And what you need for this is a smart purchasing software that prioritizes your products’ purchasing patterns and tells you what items should be placed on special order basis with a click that turns it from a sale to a placed order.

This feature is especially useful during these times of Covid19 pandemic where customers’ demand has shifted in specific what it concerns restaurants. Not being able to dine-in has caused in reduction of the menu like specialty meals such as expensive steaks or salmon.

Restaurants can track the demand on these items and forecast demand based on POS reports to organize next purchasing orders.

Alerts of expiration dates

Imagine you have 100 products in different stores, and you have to manage all of the expiration dates in different warehouses.

Impossible to do so without a smart purchasing module.

It alerts you of different expiration dates, so it reduces your waste and hence your costs , as this article clarifies.

After the alert, attempt to create discounted bundles, offers or cashback on these items to reduce spoilage and product recalling.

A smart software controls the expiration of all the ingredients used in a certain product.

Let’s say you sell ice cream, the software has all expiration dates of all the ingredients used to produce ice cream on a certain date like the cream, sugar or milk. It tracks ingredients’ expiration dates by item lot and supplier.

So for any production made, the smart software has detailed information about different products and their ingredients’ expiration dates to make tracking very convenient.

Let’s say a customer has reported poisoned from consuming your product, ice cream as an example.

You can easily track all the details about the ice cream  from their production date and its ingredients and if the production batch related to this product is poisonous, you recall it without causing more fatalities.

Guarantees the best buys

It’s time to reorder and you need to get the best deal to reduce your purchasing costs. A smart software does the job for you. It gets you different prices according to needed quantities from different suppliers.

It also gets you different offers related to certain quantities from different suppliers.

Not any purchasing module does the job for you. You need a smart one like BIM POS software to benefit from such services.

Spot check in inventory

You have to keep your inventory accurate. The only way to do so is to perform a spot inventory check up.

First, you control possible theft by any employee and you are less prone to human mistakes.

Second, you always guarantee an updated inventory.

A smart inventory module enables a spot check inventory enabling a constant company performance.

Multi branch replenishment

Assume you have different locations or branches and you have a big warehouse, are you going to order the supplies for each branch separately?

Or are you going to save money and order for all your branches from a main warehouse?

A smart purchasing module enables you to track your ordering needs among different branches, so you order them in quantities and benefiting from deals associated with bigger quantities.

It eliminates the struggle related to overseeing multiple sales channel as this article explains.

Auto- purchasing management

Reduce human intervention by creating scheduled auto-purchasing orders which reduces human errors especially related to data entry or even forgetfulness.

Assume you must order vegetables or fruits everyday. You can schedule a daily auto-purchasing order depending on your daily needs at 9 am for the same day or 6 pm for the following day.

Certain orders might be made on weekly or monthly basis. You can arrange all these auto-purchasing orders through a smart purchasing module.

BIM POS offers a smart purchasing module that gathers unique features responding to all your purchasing management needs. 

Controlling operations’ costs

All these benefits create controlled operational costs whether from reducing waste and spoilage or managing inventory to avoid shortage to reducing human intervention and errors.

You might think it’s unnecessary money you don’t want to spend on smart purchasing module and you can invest this money somewhere else in your business.

You’re totally wrong!!

It’s the most rewarding investment with tangible returns so choose wisely.