Well-managed inventory has multiple benefits for private sector and electrical utilities companies, allowing you to better service your customers, adapt to changing market conditions more rapidly, take advantage of opportunities and reduce your carrying costs, labour costs, rent and capital expenditures. With this in mind, we’ve put together the following tips to help you optimize inventory management.

1. 1. Audit your Data Collection
      The first step to a robust inventory management system is to ensure that you are collecting accurate data across your organization. This will allow you to align your purchasing with demand from customers and your marketing efforts to drive sales. Incomplete or inaccurate data can lead to overstocking or understocking of products and the resultant waste of resources or delays in carrying out processes.

 

• Review Purchase Orders
  The details of purchase orders can frequently change as your customers need to update quantities, adjust delivery dates and require additional items for inclusion on their orders. Regularly review purchase orders to ensure the most recent correspondence with your customers has been reflected in the purchase orders on file.

 

 

• Budget for Total Demand
  Rather than budgeting for demand on an item by item basis appraise your stocking needs on a company wide basis. Forecasted growth for the business as a whole or for business sectors can be a more reliable determinant of the stock levels required than attempting to predict the levels  of each individual item that will be required.

 

 

• Perform Forecasting Variance Analysis
  Review your forecasts for accuracy by performing variance analysis on the forecasted versus actual requirements. This will help your to appraise the reliability of your forecasts and refine them to an optimum level. The more accurate your forecasts the better a position you will be in to manage your inventory efficiently.

 

 

• Create Detailed Vendor Profiles
  Perform a detailed review of your vendor and create profiles including all of the product you currently source from them and items which you may need to source in the future. Include details of the time it takes to receive item from them once ordered, their adaptiveness, returns policies and any other information that will help you to better project their responsiveness to your needs.

 

To find out how your organization can benefit from these stock keeping tips from a third-part supplier like us,  get touch today to discuss your business needs and the services we can offer you. We specialize in turnkey stocking for the private sector and electrical utilities industry.