When it comes to moving stock and inventory control, the pace of change is so rapid, it can be hard to keep up.
As your business grows, you might be shipping more than you did 12 months ago, but the amount of time you have to do it stays the same.
You can’t manufacture more time, but you can look for opportunities to be more productive.
Often, productivity gets bogged down because an organisation struggles to untie itself from its legacy method of doing inventory forecasting.
Tech playing catchup
One of the reasons that has happened is because the technology for SMBs has historically been inadequate.
Until recently, technology was not purpose-built for inventory forecasting in this market.
As a result, SMB users of the software had to come up with ways to fit a square peg in a round hole.
This spawns all sorts of ingenious and novel ways to overcome these pitfall.
Invariably it involves a hybrid of the software and a spreadsheet. Data gets exported as a CSV file, various calculations are made, and then it gets re-uploaded to the software.
You make more configurations in the software, cross-reference the data a few times, and finally create an order plan that - fingers crossed - will do the job.
This is so unique and customised for each business, it’s a challenge for anyone else to understand what’s happening.
Change is hard
This scenario is one that’s derided by business owners and inventory planners, primarily because it’s so ungainly and time-consuming
When you check your emails in the morning, you don’t need more than two clicks to scan your inbox and start replying to messages.
Likewise, a new shipment needn’t require more than a few scans to mark it as received.
A lot of the tasks we do in a day are seamless and they drive productivity.
It certainly makes more sense to do the above options than the outmoded equivalents like sending a fax or counting large volumes of stock by hand.
When it comes to inventory forecasting, we still see a lot of hesitancy towards adopting technology for automating demand forecasting.
It can seem too good to be true - but with a little bit of work upfront, you can have a lot of confidence in its ability to help you save time and improve productivity.
If you haven’t already, check out how a manufacturer, Times-7, has been using StockTrim to optimise their inventory.
You can try it for yourself by signing up for our 14-day trial.
