Nowadays Business owners and managers have to deal with more and more complex Inventory management challenges. To take them up successfully they need an irreplaceable and, in a way, magic tool. It is no surprise that manual inventory tracking has become not only inefficient, but also outdated. That’s when inventory management software comes to their rescue. Business proprietors use it to accomplish all their daily small business tasks among which is the increase of sales and profit.

In Tecom Group we have in-depth experience in inventory control software development, in particular HandiFox, inventory control and sales management solution. Our software is in high  demand by clients from a diverse variety of industries, including consumer goods, agricultural supply, medicine and healthcare, automotive parts and supply, electronics distribution, etc. From our customers’ demands and requests we know what are these issues that small business owners and managers have to address. No doubt, there is a great number of them, still we have chosen most popular issues. And to make your reading a pleasure we have illustrated the chosen ones with three small business scenarios. What is more, for each scenario we named a type of issue and software feature that can easily solve this problem.

Issue: a sudden shortage of goods

The whole country is looking forward for Christmas but Mike, a stock manager, is not really happy. Last week his colleague was fired and now Mike has to do the job of two. He knows that very soon people will hurry up to shopping centers to buy Christmas-tree decorations. As usually the high season will start. Mike will have to track two warehouses located in different parts of the city. If one of the warehouses is short of goods it will take him time to count manually the quantity of goods on hand and only then make a purchase order and wait for the replenishment. “Not a word about the rise of your wage if we fail to comply with our profit plan“, said Mike’s boss to him. Only one thing would help Mike and this is inventory control software. It will definitely save Mike the trouble of running around the warehouses counting the quantity of decorations on hand. What is more, he will get detailed information about not just the total number of items inventoried, but also their location, and quantities relative to each location.

Feature: multi-location inventory tracking

Issue: Business should be always on hand

It’s Sunday evening and George, an owner of five small grocery stores, is packing up for a one-week business trip. He is going to have meetings with potential suppliers and if both sides are satisfied, he will be lucky to sign at least three contracts. George is looking forward to establishing new contacts and opening new perspectives for his small business. But at the same time he is a bit nervous because he is in the habit of controlling everything that is going on in the warehouse. Even a mouse won’t slip by him without his permission. He would constantly call and send messages to his employees bothering them with questions concerning inventory counting, purchase orders, sales orders and invoices, etc. And it is no wonder because whatever can happen during his absence. But George’s life would be much easier and his business trip would bring him more pleasure if he uses hosted inventory management software. With it, it is a piece of cake to manage accounting and inventory issues on the go. What is more, it offers the customers to choose from a list of trusted authorized hosts.

Feature: hosted inventory data

Issue: Damaged materials can mix in with good quality goods on a warehouse  

It is Friday afternoon and John, a warehouseman, cannot think about anything else but the end of the day when he and his new girlfriend come to the restaurant. But the moment he starts to imagine the evening in minute details he hears his mobile phone ringing. “As soon as possible, faster, right now,“ cries his boss seemingly trying to pull himself together. “Find all the bottles of milk that were delivered to the warehouse on December, 1 and recall them. The inspection can come any time. Some bottles from this batch probably contain substances prohibited by the state standard“. It will take John a lot of time to examine all the bottles of milk on hand. Probably, he will finish the check only by night. It is quite obvious that all his dreams about the evening will stay only dreams. We feel really sorry for John who has never heard about inventory control software that would solve his problem in no time. Using it he just could track the bottles of milk processed together in the same batch and recall from the particular batch only those that have been affected – instead of having to recall all of the bottles on all the shelves.

Feature: Serial & Lot Number Tracking

Did you recognize yourself in one of the characters from the scenarios?

If you did, it means that like our characters you are strongly recommended to choose a piece of inventory management software that would be perfectly tailored to the size of your business, your budget and your business tasks.

By investing in inventory control software you will easily solve the above discussed issues and will spare time to work out strategic plan for the further development of your business.

Even though the list of inventory management software is really long, we hope that you will make a right choice.

The SmallBizRising Blog is designed to be an educational content hub pulling information, best practices and practical advice for the small business owner and features topics including accounting, marketing, technology and more.  Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date with new content as it is posted.  The blog was created by The Neat Company and receives contributed content from a group of contributing companies that provide technology, services and solutions to small businesses.

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