Effective inventory management means you won’t be dealing with:

• Overstocking - purchasing too early or too many products
• Understocking - purchasing insufficient items or having a fresh shipment arrive late
• Overspending - purchasing more stock than you can afford to keep.

As the owner of a wholesale business dealing in physical products, it’s likely you’ll have a considerable number of SKUs and enough inventory for a warehouse or two. If you’re still depending on spreadsheets to keep track of your inventory, there’s a high chance you’re spending a significant amount of time manually keeping track of inventory movement.

Obtaining wholesale distribution software for inventory management can help you to save time and keep your numbers straight, since automation is a big help when it comes to minimizing the likelihood of human errors. If you’re looking into wholesale software to help with your inventory and order management, we’ve put together a list of the three biggest benefits of getting an inventory system for your business.

• Real time inventory updates

With real time inventory updates, you’ll no longer need to manually update all your sales into a spreadsheet at the end of every workday. Instead, you’ll be able to sync your different sales channels, such as a retail eCommerce platform like Shopify and your B2B eCommerce platform, with your inventory software. All you have to do is update your inventory levels when a new shipment arrives and the system will adjust your stock levels whenever customers make purchases.

By automating your inventory processes, you’ll no longer need to worry about overselling, as you’ll always know how many items you have in stock. On top of that, if it looks like demand for your products is skyrocketing, you can even open backorders for your customers so that you’ll never lose a sale.

• Business intelligence

How do you decide on your business direction for the months ahead? It can seem like a huge gamble, but with the help of business data and inventory status reporting, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about what’s best for your business and play to your strengths.

By integrating your eCommerce platforms with inventory control software that has business intelligence reports, you’ll enjoy insights into your sales data. You’ll know your bestsellers by season, your best performing sales channels, and access to agent and sales representative productivity reporting. On top of that, business intelligence can give you valuable information about where your customers are coming from, which can help you determine your expansion plans.

• Sync all elements of your business

Besides inventory management, businesses also need to manage other aspects of their business, such as CRM, eCommerce, accounting and fulfillment. With the right cloud inventory management software that is compatible with other specialized software, you’ll be able to push and pull orders from one platform to another.

By automating your business processes, you’ll be able to record everything about your business without having to manually enter your data. Your customers will also thank you. They won’t have to call you for updates on order fulfilment when you’re sending them automated shipping updates every step of the way, right until their package arrives on their doorstep.