It has been near-impossible for retailers to track and manage inventory during the pandemic, resulting in unexpected product delays and shortages weighing heavily on retailers’ bottom lines.
One area where this is crucial is grocery inventory management – which is particularly challenging, as much of the product is perishable. The result of long transit times and shelf rot contributed greatly to global food waste and lost sales.
To meet the rising demands of customers, inventory must be continuously maintained and closely monitored. At this point, investing in inventory management software is likely the best decision you can make for your grocery store.
To help you address any needs you may have when picking the right inventory management software for your grocery store, we’ll be looking at the top challenges your business may encounters.
Top Retail Store Challenges and Solutions
Challenge: Warehouse efficiency
In your warehouse/stockroom, inventory control involves a number of labour-intensive steps: receiving, storing, packing, and shipping your items. When warehouse activities are not managed well, they will directly impact sales and cause in-order delivery delays.
Solution: Shelf management
Use an inventory solution with dynamic views of stock to support better processes, better availability and better selling. Think of useful features you might need, for example, shelf and price audit, dealing with exceptions or picking lists.
Challenge: Communication gap
It is possible for a single communication gap between your teams to harm the efficiency and effectiveness of a store. Let’s say there is a price change or an ongoing discount that is not communicated before the order is labelled, the order will be sold at the wrong price, thus making your business look unprofessional.
Solution: Order review
Review and manage discounts and replenishments with the right inventory solution. With our inventory management, you can easily add new products, create detailed descriptions, upload pictures, and change prices across all platforms. You can also easily and quickly reconcile your counts and write-offs.
Challenge: Inventory loss
A variety of risks are involved when managing grocery items, such as the loss of inventory or unusability of items due to various factors, such as expiration dates, rotten items, spoilage, theft, or damage during packing and transporting. It is difficult to manage inventory effectively if insufficient efforts have been made to identify, track, measure, and manage the problem areas.
Solution: Inventory adjustments
With an inventory management system, you will be able to unify information across sales channels within one platform and ensure that inventory information is always up-to-date and accurate. Our solution offers unique features like theft, freezer breakdown, product recall, supplier and store transfer, and short delivery to address the most common challenges of inventory loss.
Challenge: Managing warehouse space
When inventory inflows and outflows increase, managing the limited warehouse space that is available becomes a challenge in itself as the volume of inventory increases. It is crucial to implement proper planning to accommodate groceries in the warehouse while taking into consideration factors such as temperature, shape, and size in order to ensure a seamless workflow.
Solution: Intelligently optimise space
Your warehouse will be organised using an inventory management system as compartments or shelves for easier picking, packing, and shipping. It is possible to automate the process further by optimising space as the requirement changes.
Challenge: Delayed deliveries
Customers may be unhappy if their orders are delayed due to disorganised inventory. To report orders or get help with them, customers will contact your customer service. Response delays, no responses, or responses that do not satisfy customer queries can harm a company.
Solution: Receive, track, review, and manage.
Stock management, especially of in-demand items, can be made easy with POS-enabled software. In order to prepare for future demand increases, grocery stores can forecast easily and make arrangements accordingly.
Choosing the Best Inventory Management Software
When narrowing down your search for inventory management software, you should also consider the following factors:
- Time to set up
- Features you need for managing, controlling, tracking, and planning your inventory
- Integrations with any existing systems
- Ease of use
- Scalability
Trust Payments has an automated inventory management system for all stores. Get in touch to learn how we can increase your bottom line.
