If you want to run a sustainable, sophisticated and profitable manufacturing business that’s renowned for its customer service and delivering excellent products quickly, then you can’t neglect or under-invest in inventory demand planning.
Here’s why inventory forecasting is integral to achieving your business strategy:
Minimise waste
Efficiency and sustainability are hot topics and for good reason. Not only does minimising waste make environmental sense, your balance sheet depends on it.
Neglecting to forecast your inventory could result in overestimating how much stock you need to hold. This damages your profitability because you either have to sell your products at a discounted price, or they can’t be sold at all because they become obsolete. You also have to lock up more capital in stock and storage facilities.
Seize opportunities
Inaccurately forecasting demand and then having insufficient stock on hand can cost you too.
Let’s say, for example, that your product is normally displayed at supermarkets, but you can’t ship enough to meet demand. You could easily lose out on that valuable shelf space and exposure.
Customers are fickle and if they can’t buy your product when they need it, they will shop elsewhere. This can be devastating to your reputation and financials.
Alternatively, if you get your demand planning right, you have the freedom to seize more business opportunities, such as being seen and sold across more retailers or expanding into new markets.
Manage complexities with ease
Your customers don’t lie awake at night thinking about the challenges you face so they can buy, let’s say, that brand new bike. They don’t think about the different billable materials that make the whole, the suppliers with varying lead times, and how each part needs to be in the right place at the right time so their product can be shipped to them in a time-frame that they’re happy with.
They won’t think about what might happen to the manufacturer if their bike is almost good to go, but someone forgot to order a spoke.
But you face these very challenges every day. Why should you make your job harder by relying on outdated tools to perform sophisticated, modern functions that your customers expect?
Return on Investment
Some businesses will spend more on a work lunch than on their inventory demand planning system. Staff morale is important, but if you are losing customers because you can’t ship your products on time, you and your staff are in trouble.
StockTrim saves our average customer $700,000 each year by avoiding overstocking. For less than the cost of a coffee a day, you can receive a significant return on investment with the help of intelligent Software as a Service (SaaS) to forecast your future inventory needs.
The solution? A flexible and responsive inventory forecasting system
StockTrim can help you achieve the big picture stuff and with the day-to-day. If you want to run an efficient and sustainable business, grab new opportunities and get a great return from an affordable service, you can give us a go with our free 14-day trial.
