As your business progresses and grows, many systems and processes need to be kept in harmony. Inventory management is one of the crucial systems that help streamline your inventory, right from the sales floor to the warehouses. Accurate inventory tracking allows you to keep track of your inventory and fulfill all the orders on time and with accuracy. This is where Inventory management tools with a wide variety of features could help out.
Here are the challenges that good inventory management software helps you overcome:

Spoilage
Items that come with expiration dates like foods and cosmetics can become unusable if they are not sold in time. Damaged items can, in turn, lead your investments down the drain. A survey report reveals that the US spends more than $218 billion in processing, transporting, and disposing of food that never gets consumed. So you can say that in inventory management, it is essential to have a solid frontline that prevents spoilage.
Using the inventory management software can give you the real-time data of your stock; thus, you can then organize the items to ensure that the older products get sold first.
Dead Stock
The expiration date isn’t the only way that the products can go wrong, the dead stock can’t be sold for other reasons like the items has been not suitable for the season, they’ve gone out of style, or the products have now become irrelevant for the market. More often, an item is declared dead if it sits on the shelf 12 months in a row.
An efficient inventory tool will provide you with the knowledge that you need to store the right amount of items. Usually, sales reports will let you know which thing is dead weight, and it also helps small and medium distributors who are looking to buy new products.
Storage Costs
Based on the season, the warehouse prices keep on fluctuating. Now and then, you often have too many products on hands that are difficult to sell; this, in turn, will drive your storage costs high. An inventory tool forecasts what items are trending so that you quickly move the inventory, and also it can determine how much of stock you need as per the demand.
Industries that need inventory management
Ecommerce
Inventory management is somewhat different in ecommerce compared to other industries as few actually maintain their own inventory. Unless they have a physical store, most of the vendors prefer to dropship.
One of the biggest challenges that most of the ecommerce businesses face is dealing with round the clock global goods distribution and round the clock order processing. Imagine, if you have an office based in Nashville, Tennessee, with working hours from 9 to 5 PM and you have to process the order for a customer based in Taiwan by 1 AM it’s not easy.
The nature of online businesses is drastically different in both operations and scale. As a result, the inventory scale ranges from massive multiple warehouses like that of Amazon to stocks kept in a home garage. Regardless of the size of the store, it is essential to keep accurate records at all times. Also, you need all the tips and hacks to increase the reach of your ecommerce platform online
So for ecommerce businesses, it all comes down to choosing the right platform and solution that can keep track of all your inventory in real-time.
Food Distribution
Inventory tool is most essential to restaurants, schools, supermarkets, and other such institutes that rely to having fresh food daily. There is a very minute difference between having too much and having too little, in case of such industries
In other industries having stock in excess is more of an inconvenience, while in the food industry, food and other edible items in stock mean wasted money and/or health problems. Excess inventory that sits put for far more extended periods without any essential measures to take care of goes rotten and ultimately has to be thrown away. Also, on the other hand, if you don’t have enough items in the stock, then you won’t be able to supply customers with the meals they need.
In the food industry, it all comes down to organizations, budget constraints, and industry regulations. Therefore, it is essential to have an inventory management solution that helps manage these all.
Consumer goods
It is tough for physical retailers in the consumer goods industry to predict the demand for stock in the near future, mainly due to the fluctuating demand for inventory levels. Seasonal changes demand different inventory levels. While proper inventory management isn’t something that many consumer retail companies have mastered, they have realized its significance in the business.
A recent report suggests that 69% of the companies still rely on the old inventory management methods that are using static spreadsheets and other archaic programs. Most retailers, after seeing the success of ecommerce due to proper inventory management, have started implementing inventory optimization that, in the end, enables them to provide better service to the customer.
Electronic Devices
This is the industry where neglecting proper inventory management can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. As a result, under or overstocking is much costlier in the electronics goods company than in any other industry.
But managing inventory isn’t just about forecasting demand and monitoring the current stock levels it also includes financial management, location tracking, and customer management. Customer management allows companies to establish a sustainable growth of the business to withstand changing market trends.
Summing it up
Not only these four industries, but inventory management is involved in many other industries, however, at a much smaller scale. But they are there. Therefore, accurate inventory tracking is needed in every sector to scale it to a bigger size and serve more customers. It also boosts your business line and sets you up for success in the future.