Signs Your Small Business Needs a New Inventory Management System

Knowing when to upgrade your inventory management system isn’t always straightforward, things to consider include whether to choose a cloud-based app, when to bring in resources, choosing the right implementation partner, and choosing the right software for your business. The benefits of implementing successfully include the end of stockouts, poor sales, and dissatisfied customers to name a few.

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A Cloud-based solution?

For many wholesale and manufacturing businesses, the inventory management system is at the heart of a cloud component solution along with integrating it into cloud-based accounting software such as Xero. Upgrading to a dedicated system typically saves you many hours of wasted time. The benefits of moving data into the cloud are known and numerous; you lose the inherent risks of storing it yourself. No longer can you be held to ransom by the person who holds the keys to your stock data; instead it can be accessed anywhere, by anyone you choose, at any time. Furthermore, cloud inventory management can bring wholesale improvements to your business. With detailed journals and fewer time-consuming errors to reconcile and more powerful reporting, you get to focus on doing what you do best.

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The tell-tale signs that you need to change

So, what are the signs that your inventory management system is outdated? The first sign is that the management reports you receive from your clients are getting less and less coherent. Figures which don’t look right are often symptomatic of poorly managed inventory. Nonsensical stock adjustments, even more so. The second sign is increasing inventory costs. This could be caused by wastage, or it might be because you are not holding stock efficiently. Either way, a solid system will help bring costs back to manageable levels and stop them from eating into their margin. Finally, watch out for slowing sales. Sales can slow for many reasons, but many businesses believe that they lost sight of sales because they were spending too much time managing their inventory. Losing sight of stock is also a most common issue driving new customers to adopt a cloud-based inventory system. The real point here is whether you want more transparency over inventory.

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Introducing Unleashed

Unleashed is a powerful cloud-based platform for all your inventory management needs. Unleashed allows you to easily and accurately track stock in real-time across various locations and allows you to get visibility on all inventory management processes and transactions across warehouses globally. With such dynamic inventory information, you can make better data-driven business decisions. Unleashed also integrates with various eCommerce software to provide a holistic business solution. Unleashed is also highly rated by the Capterra website (a website that rates and reviews cloud-based systems) – it has a 4.5 out of 5-star rating based on 235 reviews. From this app review website, independent reviews of the software include the following comments:

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• We have pushed the boundaries with what we expected from Unleashed and we have a mobile workforce, we run multiple warehouses, we have thousands of SKU numbers and we have multiple suppliers for the same product. The system handles all this with ease.
• Whilst I find new things and different ways of doing it our business has changed and upped a few gears since installing unleashed.
• Training our staff took less than 5 minutes as it was very easy to use and understand.
• If you're on your mobile / laptop/home PC / Tablet / at the office / at somebody else's office, Unleashed is there at your fingertips in seconds and you have the power to operate seamlessly and without compromise.
• The Unleashed Support team is quick to respond and is very good at following up. For example, we had an issue with the multi-currency function and within 48-hours they had a solution that was implemented for us.
• While we produce our products in the US, our customer service and bookkeeping are carried out overseas. So, having a secure cloud-based system is very important to us. Unleashed allows us to securely manage all aspects of the data while not minimizing the success of our overseas workers.

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When looking for an inventory management system, we recommend that you do not exclude cloud-based providers as these systems are quite powerful for a small price. If you would like to know more about Xero/Unleashed or would like to take up our discounted implementation offer, submit your contact details here and one of our consultants will be in touch.

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DISCLAIMER

This article is an extract from the Unleashed/Capterra website and is written in general terms and therefore cannot be relied on to cover specific situations; application of the principles set out will depend upon the particular circumstances involved and we recommend that you obtain professional advice before acting or refraining from acting on any of its contents.

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