As we know, inventory management and stock control are the backbones of running a successful business. A good inventory management tool can help prevent potential losses, decrease operation costs, boost business turnover rate and give you accurate scores of business operations on various dimensions.
In this post, let’s talk about the steps to choosing a suitable inventory management tool for your business.
There is no one best inventory system for all businesses, each business type has its own characteristics and specific requirements. Here in this article, we generalize the key factors from top to bottom, and the most important one comes first.
Factors to Consider:
- Inventory System Requirements
This is obvious, running a retail store is very different from operating a dining restaurant. We all know this. So before making any decision, it’s better to write down the inventory management requirements for your business, like these:
- Multi-Employee Account
- Item Return
- Bar code integration
- Back-order
- Online Store
- Stock Warning
- Financial and accounting
- Multi-House
- Multi-Currency
- POS Features
- Shipment Tracking
- Android, IOS
…
Write them down one by one, and mark each feature as optional or must-have. When you complete this step, you will surely have a whole scenario for the tool you want in your brain.
It’s time to find and filter inventory management tools for your business by searching on Google. If you still can’t find one that meets your requirements after many searches, then delete some optional features in the memo until you identify and obtain some inventory tools as candidates.
You might find 3 or 4 inventory software or tools as candidates after searching. Now it’s time to do a comparison and select the best one from these candidates.
- Stability and Security
The Internet takes over nearly everything. Traditional businesses cannot survive in the future if they have no contact with the Internet. Many, many software companies provide software as a service architecture on the cloud, and you can access and manage your business everywhere and on any device.
This is very convenient and efficient, but in such a situation, your business data is stored on the cloud of the software company. You should be concerned more about data security and account accessibility and make sure your data is safe and secure. It’s a very bad experience if you can’t access and operate the inventory business during some busy workdays, so stability and accessibility are crucial.
The reputation and strength of the software companies are also important.
You should choose the big ones with common sense, but if you do not know, you can try a visit or ask the sales representative about your questions and doubts.
- Easy-use
User experience is also very important. You should at least try using 2 or 3 software before making a decision. A good user experience can help your employees work easily and efficiently.
- Sales Service
Sales service is also an important factor when making a decision to choose this provider over that provider. Service is a part of the product you bought, so do not choose the one that delays the response to your request or ignores your problems. It’s really frustrating when you are trying to solve an urgent problem but get no response from the provider.
- Scalability
The software you use must also grow with your business. If the software cannot scale well, it will eventually impend your business growth, and switching to a new software will cost more in money and time.
- Price
How much the software costs is the last factor to consider. When you filter according to the factors from top to bottom and have more than one candidate, the lower price is your option.
There are some free inventory software tools, but the features are normally not comprehensive. Do not choose the one that is over-charged.
- Conclusion
If you have a goal and preparation with concrete requirements written down, then finding the best inventory software will not be as difficult as you thought. I hope this article can, to some extent, help you find your inventory tool.