Poor inventory management is one of the biggest reasons for inefficiency, negative customer experience, and the resulting loss. This problem becomes more impactful when you’re selling a wide range of products and have only a limited space to store them all. 

In such a case, these can be the consequences of poor inventory management:

• You are unable to display your wide range of products
• Poor choice of inventory management reduces your sales
• Limited choices can be a turn-off for customers
• Aggravates to track your inventory and manage them efficiently
• Decreases employee productivity as they are constantly searching for products
• Can create conflict between customers and employees.

If you are grappling with these problems, the good news is there is an effective solution that can help you to have full control over your inventory and orders as well; that is a well-positioned omnichannel order & inventory management system. You can leverage boosting your operation efficiency, customer experience, and overall productivity with the right strategy and technology behind. Let’s see how acquiring this kind of technology can protect your business from facing basic problems.

Omnichannel Order Management for Better Inventory

Omnichannel inventory technology should unify the entire inventory in a single place and give you real-time visibility, allowing retailers to have the right data over inventory while planning stock or demand according to the analytics. This gives retailers the power to procure what is needed based on customers’ demands. So, the concepts of “overstock” and “stockout” are eliminated as they have a unified look and can access the entire inventory whether it’s located in a warehouse or physical store. It helps retailers stop large items to occupy a ton of space in-store.

Let’s try to dive into this concept with an example. For instance, a customer walks into your store to buy a washing machine. You deal in about three brands and five models of each, for a total of 15 different of them. Imagine how much space it would take to store them and it’s just one product example. In addition to that, they are not fast-moving, so they just sit idle and occupy a large part of your store or maybe occupy the products’ place you can make profit from.

At the same time, when you don’t store these products, it can be a turn-off for your customer, and he/she can walk away to buy it from another store. That is something you surely don’t want. So, how can you strike a balance between these two possible scenarios? The simple answer – omnichannel order and inventory management systems and related devices to let customers monitor the products that aren’t in the store.

Think about a scenario where your customer picks one of your washing machine models; however, it is not in your stock. What will be your move to sell your product without any frustration for both sides? With an omnichannel order & inventory management system, you can immediately check other warehouses or stores with the help of real-time inventory visibility to find the way to sell the product. You can show the product to your customers without leaving their side thanks to the store associates app which enables displaying the entire inventory and related information in real-time. Also, you can let your customers help themselves and use in-store kiosks to display different models of a certain product they are looking for either it’s located in this store or not, and to enable them complete checkout without needing any assistance.

Improving Customer Engagement and Employee Productivity

As a business owner, this is another potential problem that keeps you from satisfying both your customers and employees. However, changing this unpleasant situation is possible with these technologies. When you empower your store associates with the right tools, they can quickly display the relevant products and their details, so they can provide accurate and timely information to customers. Also, they can display more choices instead of the unavailable product. It’s not just about selling the product, it’s also the principle of not saying “no” to customers to build loyalty and increase customer satisfaction. On the other side, the business owner increases the motivation of their employees by giving them what they need -the mobile app- to help them avoid wasting time searching for products and meet customer needs as soon as possible.

As you see, order & inventory management systems and in-store mobile devices, in particular, can be the panacea for all the problems that have been contributing to your loss. So, why not acquiring one to boost operational efficiency? Meet Shopi’s Order & Inventory Hub to have those capabilities to run your business in the most efficient way possible with minimum cost and maximum customer satisfaction.