Inventory for any company is its heart, so poor inventory management can cost the company a lot. Recently, the importance of multichannel inventory management has emerged, through which purchase order operations, warehouse management and shipping management have become easier. It clearly contributed to the timely execution of customer orders, which made it a comprehensive inventory management solution. In this article, we will talk in detail about multichannel inventory management, its importance, as well as its benefits.
What is multichannel inventory management?
Multichannel inventory management is the process by which companies rely on a set of smart tools to manage and track orders from different sales sources on inventory held in multiple locations.
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Why is a multichannel inventory system important?
Multichannel inventory management effectively helps in avoiding over-selling and also improves the management of your orders.
In addition to its significant role in improving warehouse management, which takes into account inventory levels in multiple sales channels.
This gives business owners an opportunity to place purchase orders according to the level of stock available to them, thus helping to avoid out-of-stock situations.
Common multichannel inventory management challenges
Despite the huge advantages offered by multichannel inventory management, there are a number of challenges that stand in the way of the huge advantages.
The following are the main challenges facing management of multichannel inventory:
1. Inaccurate stock levels during promotions
One of the major challenges that negatively affects companies and businesses in multichannel inventory management is the inaccuracy of inventory levels in the various sales channels, especially during promotional offers.
You need to be very aware of the available stock levels, especially during promotions, and outsourcing your logistics can help you solve that dilemma.
2. The lack of reverse flow logistics
It is one of the main challenges of multichannel inventory management, which can negatively affect the customer experience.
Especially since it has a significant impact on the accuracy of the inventory available in the various sales channels. So you need to manage returns and canceled orders appropriately.
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3. Underselling and overselling
One of the most important challenges for management of multichannel inventory is selling the same product to two different operations if the inventory is not updated in all sales channels in real time.
Consequently, there are many cancellations and delays in the delivery of orders, due to the lack of sufficient stock. This leads to a significant loss of your revenues, thus negatively affecting your investments.
4. Lack of full visibility of inventory
Not seeing your inventory in sales channels can complicate sales, especially if you track inventory manually.
Therefore, the inventory must be tracked automatically through all the sales channels that you own.
Thus avoiding manual errors and dealing with the inventory appropriately, so it’s one of the most important challenges of multichannel inventory management.
What are the benefits of multichannel inventory management?
There are a lot of amazing benefits that multichannel inventory management provides, if managed properly.
Which would positively affect customer experience and keep track of inventory levels, thus clearly improving corporate revenues.
The following are the most prominent benefits of multichannel inventory management:
1. Track order data more accurately
This is one of the most important benefits which would help business owners to better understand customer demand.
Thus giving them the ability to make the best decisions, by keeping track of what is the best and least sold in the different sales channels.
All of this basically helps companies place purchase orders correctly, thus better satisfying customer needs which improves the customer experience itself.
2. Improve warehouse management
Multichannel inventory management systems help to manage warehouses more accurately and orderly, because they take into account inventory levels.
This helps business owners place purchase orders according to their available stock levels, thus avoiding out-of-stock situations and managing warehouses better.
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3. Avoid cases of overselling
Which is considered as one of the most prominent problems facing manual inventory management processes across multiple channels.
That misleads business owners and makes them believe that they have already delivered the required product.
This, in turn, leads to poor order management and delayed order fulfillment, thus giving customers a bad experience.
But the management of multichannel inventory helps avoid overselling and improves your order management.
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