Small and mid-sized businesses need an order-fulfillment process that supports growth. Yet, if you don’t have inventory visibility, it can be difficult to maintain the pace you set for yourself. The result is less than stellar: overstock, stock-outs, and incorrect counts become reality. Often, these scenarios are caused by inefficiencies in your management processes, but with inventory visibility, you can tackle any issues before they begin.
Why does inventory visibility matter? Let’s find out.
What is Inventory Visibility?
Knowing how much inventory you have and where it is located within the warehouse at any time is called inventory visibility. You can gain this by using a warehouse management system (WMS) or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Using such solutions gives you the ability to scan, view, and track stock in real-time.
Today’s supply chain requires multiple locations to be connected or to communicate with one another. For example, there are warehouses and distribution centers, trucks within transit, manufacturers, producers, suppliers, and distributors all interacting to move products from one location to the next. Inventory visibility also ensures that every point along the supply line receives information—through EDIs, ledgers, etc—about the shipments.
In other words, inventory visibility also creates traceable internal records, supporting accuracy, monitoring, and more.
Why Does Inventory Visibility Matter?
Inventory visibility is important, but it is also beneficial. In order to scale your SMB, you need visibility into your inventory so you can manage your business and meet customer expectations. It doesn’t matter if your business is based on eCommerce or if you are running a chemical or pharmaceutical warehouse.
Having the full details of the inventory provides insight into reality but also the unexpected. The data allows you to analyze and make better decisions. You can also allocate inventory to reduce expired products, minimize errors, reduce operating costs, and accelerate processing time.
