You WILL Need Inventory Management Software
Michalis "BIG Mike" Kotzakolios
Kotzakoliou, SSA

Inventory management is obviously a very important aspect of any business. There are many aspects to inventory management beyond the obvious tracking of stock levels.

A smart business would not keep a large amount of operating capital tied up in having an over abundance of inventory at any given time. Inventory management software allows the business to keep a tighter control over the balance between inventory, seen as both an asset and as a liability.

On the other hand, a business needs inventory management software that will alert them when their stock level is running low. Some businesses may be able to order their inventory as it is requested by customers. Order tracking would also be an associated process, both incoming sales orders and outgoing orders for stock would need to be tracked and accounted for in the system at all stages in the operation, to ensure that the estimated time of arrival is as promised.

Inventory management software comes with many additional specialized features included that a particular business may need to keep track of all of the item and price variations in their stock, and even management of customer requirements and fulfillment of particular items. Stock may have a single item price, and a price for volume discount. Each customer, may have a different price range, depending on the agreement negotiated by the sales department if there is a contract involved.

In today’s marketplace, almost any business establishment has multiple formats to their sales process, including telephone orders, catalog/mail order, internet, direct sales, and special campaign sales. These may all have different pricing and other details that need to be readily accessible to the sales force and the order fulfillment departments. Inventory management software keeps track of all of these things, including the expiration dates for special pricing.

An item may have a catalog item number, a UPC code, come in multiple colors, multiples sizes, and be sold in combination with other related items. They may have a location code, or lot number, and these may vary throughout the manufacturing process if that is a function of the business. This would be another necessary function of the inventory management software.

Inventory management software can be incredibly complex, not just because of all of the above mentioned variables that need to be tracked, but because the company will want to know exactly where every item is at any given moment. It could be in the shipping department, it could be on the shelf, it could be on order from another facility, it could be in transit to the customer.

Many inventory management software packages today are custom built and industry specific, due to the fact that a business would want to have all of the necessary applications, and would not want to pay for functions it does not use.