Big data has become one of the most popular technologies in the world today. It is helping companies break the barrier and establish themselves as a market leader. As an online seller, you must have heard about its implications in ecommerce. While organizations are using it in several key departments of their business, one such area is inventory management. The applications of big data in inventory management are diverse. It all depends on how you leverage them for your business!
Applications of big data in inventory management can have a lot of effect on your organization. It can help you streamline your inventory, find the precise reasons or a big problem and more. In fact, it can also help you improve your business reputation by many folds.
Therefore, applications of big data in inventory management have the potential for a lot of improvement in your organization. But, everything begins with your first step. Until you decide to leverage it for your business, there is nothing that it can do for you.
Importance of Inventory
Inventory is one of the most essential assets of a business. This is what helps you establish your ground in the market. Moreover, it also enables you to provide value to your customers. Here are some quick reasons why inventory is important to your online business-
- Inventory helps you establish a reputation in the market
- You get to reach out to customers with your inventory
- Target market segments based on the nature of your inventory
- Fulfill orders to the farthest of locations with your inventory
- They are tangible assets that bring you returns
- Helps you represent your brand
- Establishes an area of expertise for your business and more
And this is precisely why you should be paying attention to your inventory no matter what. A little mistake can cost you your business. Most ecommerce sellers make this mistake of taking their inventory for granted. They keep on selling without performing any quality check. In addition to this, they don’t even monitor their inventory that often.
All of this creates a lot of gaps in the business that in turn lead to inefficiencies. And once in a while businesses have to face the consequences of these mistakes. Therefore, it is wise to take precautions and measures regarding your inventory.
One of the best ways to make sure that your inventory is being taken care of leveraging technology. Applications of big data in inventory management can help establish transparency and ease the order fulfillment process. In other words, it can make the entire supply chain seem effortless.
No matter how much data your business already has, if you are not apple to leverage it, there is no point in anything. With applications of big data in inventory management, you can do a lot more. Be it establishing transparency in your own business or using your inventory to advance in the market. Big data will have you all covered!
Applications of Big Data in Inventory Management: What Goes Wrong with Inventory Management?
Inventory management is more challenging of a task than it seems. It might seem like it ends at keeping a track on your inventory, but it’s the opposite. While keeping the numbers is good, it is only a part of the inventory management process. In addition to this, there are several other tasks that online businesses end up neglecting. Therefore, these create problems in the order fulfillment.
Manual processes
When online businesses try to manage their inventory, they often end up taking up with manual processes. This means that they manually count their inventory and hire people to do the job. What they miss out on in this process is that manual efforts are seldom efficient. If you’re operating from your home, it might seem feasible rather than investing in some big software. However, remember that your goal is to expand your business. And as you do, manual processes will become tedious.
Human Errors
When you’re doing everything manually, there are more than a few chances of errors to crop up. Be it in calculation, counting or performing some complex formula. It becomes far more difficult for a business to do it all by themselves. And it doesn’ even matter how many employees have you hired for the task. If it has been left to the humans, errors will crop up and while it might not seem a lot at the backend, it hampers customer experience.with applications of big data in inventory management, this is not bound to happen.
Time Consuming
Inventory management efforts are a lot time consuming. If you’re trying to do it by yourself, you’ll have nothing else to do. This would mean that you end up all your precious time monitoring your inventory. Even the most simplest of tasks, can take time. And this can hamper your business growth. When you’re running an online business you need to take care of it holistically. In case you miss out on it, there is nothing that you can do.
Hampered Customer Satisfaction
The aggregated errors from undertaking manual processes can damage your reputation with the customers. For example, you might send a customer an incorrect product, or one that has not undergone the quality check. Therefore, it can mean you lose business and your customers. With applications of big data in inventory management, all this can be limited.
Applications of Big Data in Inventory Management, You Must Leverage Right Away
Now that you are aware of the importance of inventory and its shortcomings, let’s move on. Next comes the actual applications of big data in inventory management that have the potential to take your business to new heights. Let’s take a look how-
Demand Forecasting
Demand forecasting is one of the most important parrots of a business. It helps you understand how much will the demand of a certain product will be in a given timeframe. The reason it is important is that you prepare your inventory accordingly. While businesses have been trying to make predictions around demands since a long time, big data brings a fresh perspective. It simplifies tasks and takes into account your legacy as well as real time data sets into account while making predictions.
Transparency in Business
The next step is to establish transparency in the business. Most of the organizations suffer because the leaders do not know what is going on with each of their departments. In other words, they have to rely on weekly m settings and data sheets to know the facts and figures. Therefore, the same elay reflects in the decision making. In today’s environment if you have to stay ahead of the competition, it is advised to make decisions in real time. With applications of big data in inventory management, all of this is possible.
Planning of Inventory
You might have seen a lot of businesses suffering from inventory issues. This may include either stocking up too much inventory or too little. This creates a lot of problems. Sometimes the inventory gets damaged in the warehouse, without even the business knowing, as a result, there are losses, applications of big data in inventory management, can prevent all of this.
Seamless Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment is a long process. It involves many steps. But, when even one of them goes wrong the entire business is disrupted. Applications of big data in inventory management can help avoid all of this. You can monitor your inventory more closely and therefore take decisions that make the entire process faster. Faster order fulfillment will also mean greater satisfaction.
Greater Reputation
If you have to enjoy a good reputation in the make,your inventory must be sorted. As a result, you have to leverage the applications of big data in inventory management. When you are efficiently delivering products and on time, you get to enjoy a far greater reputation with satisfied customers.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is yet another factor that keeps organizations sustained in the market. If your customers are not satisfied, your business will not rise. With big data, you get to deliver faster, optimize your order fulfillment and supply chain. All of this increases the efficiency of your business. Ultimately, it results in better fulfillment of commitment to the customer.
Stock Preparation
No one likes to lose a sale opportunity. Especially when you have products out of stock, you might not just lose a sale, but also the customer. On the other hand, by leveraging applications of big data for inventory management, you can get alerts when your stocks are running out. Replenishing these in time can mean more satisfied customers and greater business.
Conclusion
Now that you know about big data, it is time you start leveraging it for your business. Remember that applications of big data in inventory management go a long way in helping you scale your business. It takes your business to the next level and helps you increase the operational efficiency. Moreover, your order fulfillment flow gets simplified. Another thing you can do to establish a seamless flow of operations is to hire a 3Pl logistics provider like Dash101. Dash101 can help you ship to 26000+ pinodes at the lowest costs. Therefore, scale your business with the perfect combination of technology and flexibility!
