How to Track Inventory in Multiple Locations

As the size of inventory increases, management becomes complex and convoluted. The problem becomes more severe when you have to expand the warehouse facility and manage multiple warehouses. If you don't have a proper inventory management system in place, you will never know how much of inventory is stored in each of the warehouse locations. So in this kind of situations, an highly advanced inventory system that helps you in warehouse management is a must. Ideally, a flexible inventory management system will help you:

• Check inventory levels of each products at each location with a click
• Integrate shipping options such as UPS, FedEx and USPS
• Transfer bulk of items from one warehouse to another in case of shortage or excess
• Monitor short-term as well as long-term trends, leading to optimum inventory decisions
• Streamline shipping and ordering processes for both customer orders and supplier orders
• Utilize wireless barcode scanners to order, receive and cycle count inventory for each location
• Update information about inventory, orders and shipment real time across the board
• Update relevant information in all other locations, including Quickbooks and Microsoft Dynamics

If you scour the market, you will find several inventory management software but not all can offer the above mentioned features. Kaushalam's inventory and order management system will offer the most advanced features over and above the functionalities mentioned above. Our software will offer convenience, reliability, efficiency and sophistication.

If you wish to know what else our inventory and order management software can offer you, contact us. Pronto.

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How Order Management Works

Order management is a significant part of any business operation as it connects inventory and customers. It starts right from the moment a customer places an order and ends when the customer receives it. Many times, eCommerce merchants connects with the customers after few days to know how happy they are with their products. Although it seems easy, there are lot many intricacies involved in this process. Let’s have a look at the process in detail.

Steps involved in order management

• When the order is placed, the merchant will pick the ordered items from the inventory and ship it to the customers
• Send email notifications to the customer, informing him/her about the shipment status

Problems involved in the process

• The merchant may be facing an out-of-stock situation when he/she received an order. So now the merchant has two options: either he/she can partially ship the order and request the customer to wait for few days to receive other part of the order, or he/she can ask the customer to cancel the order altogether.
• Sometimes the merchant may not stock all the items, especially when he/she is selling thousands of items. He/she may be using drop shipping, asking the manufacturer to directly ship the item to the customers.
• Another potential area of problem is when the merchant is using fulfillment warehouse. When the cost of carrying inventory rises too much, many merchants use third-party warehouses to store their inventory. When the merchant using such facilities receives an order, he/she forwards the order information to the warehouse party, who in turn will ship the goods directly to the customers.

Execution of the process

As I said earlier, many times there can be multiple parties involved in the order management – merchant, customer, shipping company, manufacturer/vendor, and/or fulfillment warehouse. To co-ordinate between all these parties, the merchant will need to use series of communication tools, including email, fax and phone calls. This method is feasible until the operations are small. As your business starts expanding, problems will start cropping up in this system. So in this situation, it’s better to use order management software.

What can order management software do?

Through order management software, a merchant can automate the entire process – right from the moment a customer places an order to the moment when the customer receives an order. Merchants can even set reminders to follow up with customers. Through an order management system, a merchant can:

• Send automatic order details to the involved parties
• Keep track of your inventory through a centralized inventory system
• Co-ordinate with various parties involved through a set procedure
• Send automatic shipping information to the customers
• Follow up with the customers to gather their feedback

Do you need help in implementing such order management system? Contact us.

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