Take the stress out of inventory tracking and wholesale order management

For wholesale distribution businesses, inventory management is one of the biggest challenges – and one of the key factors in a successful business.

If you’re like most wholesale distribution owners, you probably have a lot of cash tied up in stock, often resulting in cashflow challenges. This also creates a barrier to investing in more inventory, which is essential for you to expand your business.

Effective inventory management and wholesale order management can be the difference between a business growing and a business failing.

Here are some more of the main benefits of looking after one of your most valuable assets – your inventory:

1. Better cashflow

When your business holds optimal levels of stock, it has more working capital available for investing in other product lines or other areas of the business – like sales and marketing. You can also then minimise stock holding and handling costs. What’s more, buying products just in time to send to customers results in less warehouse shelf time and therefore less storage costs.

Overstocking is another costly mistake businesses tend to make. Tying cash up in large amounts of stock can be a risky move, especially if the demand is not there. If the product ends up expiring or becoming obsolete, the stock has to be written off or significantly discounted, potentially costing the business thousands of dollars.

2. Better real-time inventory tracking

When you free up your working capital, you gain the ability to invest in more inventory, or even sales and marketing. This is inventory management at its peak performance.

But to do this, you need a system that gives you real-time stock availability and sophisticated data analytics of historical purchases. This lets your sales reps proactively manage upsell and cross sell opportunities. Sales can be alerted to other items that the customer has purchased previously or items that other customers have bought when purchasing the same item.

In instances when sales orders are booked for items that need to go on “back order” there is a high potential for the customer to cancel the order. With real-time access to inventory available at the time of making the order, sales reps can recommend a substitute.

3. Faster order fulfilment

When you have a small business solution that gives you a good understanding of your inventory performance, it’s much easier to improve your order fulfilment efficiency. You can reduce your order fulfilment times, and you can purchase products “just in time” to send to customers. This reduces your warehouse storage time and speeds up your turnover. The last thing you want is stock sitting around costing you money.

Want to improve inventory management for your business?

Best practice inventory management and data-driven inventory tracking is something that all inventory-carrying business owners should aim for.

JCurve’s all-in-one software provides wholesale distributors the ability to record, analyse and report on your inventory, as well as effectively manage your orders by having full visibility on the stock you’ve got. By helping you improve your inventory management and inventory tracking, JCurve allows you to focus on growing.

Want to find out more? Talk to one of our consultants about how JCurve’s small business software and CRM can help your wholesale distribution business grow.