If you are running an e-commerce Shopify store, you need to manage and control the inventory based on regular inputs of goods stored, goods sold online, and post-sales replenishment requirements of goods.
Without the software, it would be difficult for you to manage inventory, supply chain management, track online payments received and made, and overlook all aspects of marketing.
A recent report published by LinkedIn (quoting market intelligence group Industry Research Biz) says: The global inventory management software market was valued at USD 2783.53 million in 2021 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.94% during the forecast period, reaching USD 4916.27 million by 2027.
If you are running a Shopify store, here are 7 key factors that can help you manage the inventory:
- Regular Inventory Tracking: Your Shopify store requires exact inventory tracking so that you can supply each and every item ordered by customers. For this, you must have historic stock data, and that too on a day-to-day basis. AI-powered software can enable you to know your daily stock position.
- Quantitative Inventory-Position Approach: Units of stock get sold on a daily basis. This means you must have statistics on the quantities of commodities on a daily basis. For this quantitative approach, you require software. Without this, you cannot optimize your sales, as you may not have quantities of commodities lying in stock.
- Inventory Status: You require the daily status of readily available commodities for sale. If you check inventory status on a regular basis, you will know when fresh supplies are likely to arrive. You know the current location of vehicles carrying the commodities and the likely time such vehicles would take to reach your store or warehouse.
- Creation of Segmented Inventory Page: A Shopify store sells a large number of goods, items, and commodities. As a result, you must have a clear picture of the stock position of such items. Keep this segmented inventory page on your table to streamline the supply chain. Such an inventory page can enable you to know the existing or warehouse stock of all your items for sale. You can also refer to it as a product page.
- Physical Condition of Inventory: Some finished commodities or goods may get damaged during transit or defaced during storage at the warehouse. If you don’t list out such damaged or defaced commodities, your Shopify may earn a bad reputation by sending damaged items to the customer. To avoid this, you must use the software. Based on your data input, the software enabled with AI will know which item (with a particular barcode or batch number) is damaged. The software will make a separate list of those damaged items, which you can remove from the shelves of your storehouse.
- Inventory Adjustment: Your Shopify store receives a continuous flow of fresh supplies of items. Your software can give you data on items by shifting them from the list of unavailable items to the list of the list of available items. On being sold, the software will automatically shift a particular item from the available to the unavailable list. This can be extremely helpful when adjusting the inventory.
- Client Compliance Historic Data: Software can help you know about client compliance, such as online booking and dispatch of commodities ordered. You also know the delivery status (whether the commodity was delivered and payment was received). This historical data can go a long way in ensuring client satisfaction, which can later turn into customer loyalty.
You need Shopify store inventory control in special ways as this is an online store. You can effectively run the store if you use AI inventory forecasting in Shopify.
By using inventory software as a key management tool, you can streamline the entire system, from the arrival of fresh stock to the sale-out of existing stock, demand-supply dynamics-based short-term market scenarios of commodities, deriving points of sales data, and getting a futuristic idea of the sales trend of different goods.
Conclusion
Smart management of Shopify stores needs smart moves. This is possible only when you use AI-powered forecasting software. This will be your main tool for managing your Shopify store. This software can enable you to track inventory correctly and inform you about the commodities that have run out of your inventory. You can also get a complete picture of historical order bookings for different commodities in a given period.