Avoid Being Haunted By the Ghost of Orders Past
Having dead stock on your shelves, haunting your warehouse, can corrode your profitability. Get 4 tips for avoiding dead inventory.
Having dead stock on your shelves, haunting your warehouse, can corrode your profitability.
A recent article in Industrial Distribution gives some examples of how distributors like you have found themselves being haunted by dead stock as well as some tips for making sure that dead stock isn’t part of your inventory’s future:
- Outdated systems lack the visibility and reporting to give you good insight into your stock needs, leaving you prone to mistakes like over-ordering. Switching to a new computer system altogether could be the key to keeping your inventory moving and your business profitable.
- Inaccurate inventory counts leads to over-ordering out of fear of stock-outs which often, in turn, leads to obsolete stock sitting on your shelves. Avoid this by adopting a perpetual inventory system that provides updates on inventory levels and reorders automatically.
- Failing to return unsold or defective items to the vendor can be costly for your business. A perpetual system with real-time inventory tracking will provide information on inventory that is building up or moving slowly and may even handle some of the return processing. It can also ensure you that you are meeting deadlines vendors set for authorized returns.
- If what you’ve ordered is going out of style, then the value of your inventory is going to drop. Having dead stock because the item went out of style is partly bad luck and partly bad judgment. Keep tabs on your inventory’s movements with enhanced business systems and order accordingly.
If you are worried about being haunted by dead stock and think that a new distribution software system may be the key to better inventory planning, download these “The Ten Steps for Distribution Software Selection.”
