Failing to deliver a customer’s purchased product puts a serious damper on the customer experience. When inventory stock outs create a loss in loyalty and sales, what’s a retailer to do?
“70 – 90% stock outs are caused by defective shelf replenishment practice, as opposed to the 10 – 30% resulting from the upstream supply chain, such as a shortage in supply from the supplier.”
If you sell electronics, perishables, flowers or nutraceuticals, this post is especially for you. These industries historically have a much higher chance of dealing with the dreaded inventory stock out. To get around the dreaded OOS sign, consider the following.
How to Avoid Inventory Stock Outs:
- Set up ‘Low Inventory’ Alerts to Know When to Restock
-Setting up these system alerts allows for stock replenishment in advance of becoming OOS
- Streamline Customer Purchasing & Purchase Orders through Automation
-See how Successful PO management can help your end goal
- Prepare Ahead When Ordering Stock- Highlight Best Selling Item
– Using historical product sales data helps Gain Insight on Trends & Peak Selling Seasons
- Consider Stock Item Levels Associated with Bundled or Kitted Products
-Gives you the opportunity to offer discount pricing
- Try Out EDI for Multichannel Orders & Dominate Ecommerce
-From PO’s to invoices and shipping notifications, all of your orders are kept in sync between multiple sales channels.
Although adopting these practices and managing your inventory stock levels are essential to ensuring product availability and increasing sales productivity, the process can get complicated, time consuming and messy.
So, let’s get down to the basics and see how we can turn this around. The quickest way to get your orders under control, without having excess inventory trailing behind, is to first centralize your order processing workflow.
Having an automated multichannel inventory management system gets your inventory under control, and fast. With an automated order and inventory management system, you would be able to automatically download new orders from all sources, publish product information and keep inventory synchronized.
Inventory spreadsheets become a thing of the past. What could be better than fulfilling orders in the present moment, avoiding stock outs at every possible turn?
An online inventory management system can ease your retail qualms and boost customer satisfaction. Why keep your customers waiting or frustrated, when preventing inventory stock outs is just a few clicks away?
