When it comes to inventory planning, using a spreadsheet is about as sophisticated and reliable as gazing into a crystal ball. Most businesses have moved away from spreadsheets for their accounting, customer relationship and workflow management, and with good reason. Yet even established global organisations are still relying on spreadsheets for one of their most critical functions: making sure their inventory is not understocked or overstocked, but just right.
Before talking about just right, let’s recap on the painful reality of a poorly managed inventory.
1. Understocking
Before joining StockTrim, our average customer was losing $350,000 in margin on the sales they couldn’t make because they couldn’t supply the products they promised. Not only does this hurt financially, but it’s embarrassing too. Loyal customers might forgive you once. But beware of getting the reputation of being a slow shipper and not delivering on what you advertise, because your customers will leave.
2. Overstocking
With overstocking, your unused product takes up space, which is not only wasteful but also risks your product becoming obsolete. StockTrim saves the average customer $700,000 each year by avoiding overstocking – leaving you cash to invest elsewhere. What business would turn their nose up at $700,000 to redirect into marketing, R&D and acquiring the best people?
3. The trouble with spreadsheets
Although many of us have grown up on spreadsheets, it’s hard to argue that they are intuitive, analytical or even reliable. Instead, they are time-hungry and vulnerable to human error. Plus, they make navigating and summarising difficult – forcing you to trawl through worksheets to try and find patterns and trends. They are simply not clever or robust enough to meet the demands of a modern manufacturing or distribution company.
Hitting that stock sweet-spot is critical to the profitability of your business, so you need a sophisticated inventory forecasting system.
With cloud-based software you can access your inventory forecasting from any device and at any time. Purchase orders are automatically generated; you just need to approve them. It comes with a streamlined dashboard so you can quickly see the most critical information – including alerts to allow you to quickly rectify any issues.
Through machine learning, StockTrim analyses past behaviours to accurately predict future trends – like the impact of seasonality. Even if you introduce a new product, StockTrim is smart enough to predict its future demand without the need for sales history.
You might assume such a system is expensive and incompatible with your current processes. But you’d be wrong. StockTrim is available from just $99 a month, and it integrates easily with your other systems to make the on-boarding process quick and simple.
StockTrim can save your business a lot of time, stress and money. If you’re thinking about giving the spreadsheets the flick, but need more convincing, give our 14 day trial a go.