Effective inventory management isn’t just a matter of keeping your inventory well-stocked and organized; it’s an incredibly important process necessary for running a successful business. Proper inventory management offers numerous benefits, from streamlined operation to enhanced customer satisfaction, maintaining sustainable growth, and staying competitive in today’s hyper-competitive market.
Fortunately, there are efficient, comprehensive, cloud-based software solutions that can help you manage your inventory regardless of the size of your business and where exactly you’re placed inside the supply chain. In this guide, we’ll discuss NetSuite inventory capabilities and some of the platform’s most important functions.
Many businesses keep their inventory management systems on-premise, which isn’t an issue in itself until you have to scale the system up due to increased demand. That’s where NetSuite comes in with its inventory capabilities.
NetSuite allows companies to track all incoming and outgoing stock in a single, real-time, cloud-based software solution that provides them with insight into their inventory across all possible locations and sales channels. This includes company-wide transparency across all possible stops in the supply chain, which further optimizes your inventory management and reduces overstock, as well as other issues.
NetSuite comes with a comprehensive range of inventory management features that help you increase the effectiveness of your logistic operations.
NetSuite allows you to track your inventory stock in real-time, which enhances the efficiency of your entire operation and leads to less stockout but also less overstocking in the long run. Since the lack of optimization is the enemy of productivity and profitability, real-time inventory tracking keeps your inventory levels in check, monitoring everything from demand, order fulfilments, inventory levels, replenishments, and reorders.
With all of your warehouse and office locations connected through a single platform, NetSuite provides you with a multi-location inventory management capability, which can help you optimize stock allocation for enhanced efficiency across all your inventory locations, optimizing stock allocation and significantly minimizing over- and understocks.
Inventory replenishment strategies are based on previous trends and forecasted future sales. Paired with automated monitoring of your current inventory levels, NetSuite provides you with the ability to set preorder points; specific stock levels that either trigger a notification to reorder more stock manually or the software solution initiates the replenishment processes on its own.
This is great because these strategies are location-based, and one strategy for one inventory location might not work for the other; in other words, it ensures that all inventory locations are adequately stocked regardless of where they’re located and how they operate.
Besides monitoring your stock levels and optimizing your inventory management, NetSuite also provides insight into inventory cost management. It allows you to assess the total cost of inventory by including the purchase price, the price of shipping and handling, as well as the price of customs duties, and other costs associated with inventory and logistics. The reason behind tracking these costs more effectively lies in formulating more accurate product pricing strategies.
NetSuite offers a comprehensive range of features associated with inventory management, such as locations, drop shipments, inventory counts, bin management, inventory status, orders, and other advanced features.
This also includes lot tracking, serial number tracking, and bin management. Serial number and lot tracking provide businesses with the ability to monitor their inventories at a granular level, thus ensuring traceability and compliance with laws and regulations.
NetSuite is a cloud-based software solution that provides scalable and cost-effective management, including integration with other systems, such as Shopify. Despite incompatibilities between various systems, NetSuite provides streamlined integration processes through various middleware solutions.
This allows businesses such as e-commerce stores to keep track of their inventory, as well as demand, order data, shipment information, customer information, and many other data points.
NetSuite can provide you with near- and real-time data and reports, eliminating the need to wait for performance assessments and course corrections.
Equipped with real-time data, you can manage your inventory based on the most recent operations, which will enable you to make data-driven decisions. These decisions will be based on immediate data and not arbitrary predictions, eliminating potential overstocks.
The world has become instantaneous and mobile, with various technologies further streamlining and automating inventory management. NetSuite provides a unified platform for all your inventory management needs, and as a cloud-based software-as-a-service, it’s accessible via the Internet from any place at any time.
You can generate reports and gain real-time insight into inventory data at any time, from the comfort of your home or during a flight on your business trip, using your tablet or smartphone.
NetSuite is loaded with inventory management capabilities that ensure streamlined data collection and analysis, which deliver insight into market trends and demands. As previously discussed, understanding these trends can easily optimize your inventory by eliminating overstocks and stockouts. This optimization is, naturally, based on historical data as well as advanced forecasting and planning, which also ensure unperturbed production without any shortage of stock.
While automation significantly simplifies and improves inventory management, the forecasting and real-time data access also ensure that your inventory management remains scalable. This enables your business to adapt to sudden changes in market demand more easily.
Not only that, but you can further utilize NetSuite to fit the diverse needs of your entire operation. This includes accounting, global business management, customer relationship management, analytics and reporting, omnichannel commerce, and human resources management.
Inventory management is much more than just keeping your inventory neatly organized. It’s a key component of sustainable growth and a successful business. If you’re looking to implement NetSuite for your inventory management system or integrate the software solution with your e-commerce business, contact ScaleNorth today.
