Ask any e-commerce retailer what the hardest part of selling online is, and they’ll likely tell you that inventory management is the hardest part of their operation. This can be complicated and time-consuming, especially if you sell across multiple channels or use multiple warehouses. While it can be difficult to maintain your inventory, it is also one of the most important aspects of running an online store. If you don’t always have an accurate estimate of your inventory, you’re bound to run into problems—overstocking or out of stock—affecting customer satisfaction and profitability. your profit.
This is why it’s important to have an inventory management system that gives you real-time updates. Real-time inventory updates, including all sales channels and warehouses, are essential for effective inventory control and inventory management. Learn how a SkuNexus customer gets real-time updates across their entire organization using Magento.
What is real-time inventory update?
In e-commerce, making sure you have enough inventory is the name of the game. If you have too little, you risk losing customers because they can’t buy what they want when they want it.
Having real-time inventory updates means your inventory levels are updated automatically as changes occur, and you can see them at a glance, in one place (on your dashboard ), across all sales channels. Your stock levels will be immediately affected when action is taken to modify them. Whether products have been sold, newly purchased inventory adjustments are made to inventory returned products, or any other change, you will see the updated inventory count. This is where the coin falls—real-time updates are accessible in a system that is accessible to any employee handling inventory. This means that every employee who needs to know what’s going on with your inventory has immediate access to information. This not only keeps everyone on the same page but also improves efficiency and ensures that you continue to have happy customers, which significantly affects your bottom line. Why you need real-time inventory updates Besides saving time and money, real-time inventory updates can help save potential customers. According to Internet Retailer magazine, more than 52% of online shoppers abandon their entire cart when they discover that one or more of their items is out of stock. This means you may lose sales of the items you have because you no longer have them.
If your inventory is updated in real-time, you’ll know exactly when you need to reorder inventory to avoid running out of stock and possibly avoid being included in this statistic. With some inventory management systems, bulk updates are used to update inventory at certain intervals (every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc.). This is too slow.
By the time your inventory is updated, it may be too late—you may have an oversold product. This can especially happen when you’re having a big sale or promotional event like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
Here are some other reasons why you need an inventory management system that provides accurate, real-time updates: It will provide visibility to all employees and relevant partners (marketplace, store website, warehouse, vendor, vendor dropshippers, etc.) It provides accurate inventory across all sales channels. It provides precise levels of product variations (color, size, etc.). This will remove the inventory. This will help eliminate excess inventory.
