Managing a business with numerous moving parts presents challenges in minimizing costly mistakes. This is especially true for online sellers, where a plethora of issues can arise between the moment a customer clicks “buy now” and the delivery of their purchase. These issues range from overselling items and frustrating customers with out-of-stock products to navigating complex return processes and dealing with lost shipments. If you’ve encountered these headaches before, you’re likely seeking a solution to streamline your operations and eliminate these problems. What you need is top-quality inventory management software (IMS) to seamlessly integrate every aspect of your sales funnel, from inception to delivery. However, selecting the best inventory management software for online sellers requires careful consideration of essential features. So, what features should you prioritize? Let’s explore.
Understanding Inventory Management Software
Before we dive into the specifics of what you should look for in IMS, let’s explore its role in an online seller’s world.
Consider this practical example: Imagine you own an online business named Pia’s Prints. Your specialty lies in offering a curated collection of art prints, elegantly framed and primed to adorn your customers’ walls. Now, let’s delve into how implementing an inventory management software system would significantly benefit Pia’s Prints:
- Product catalog setup: You set up your product catalog in your IMS. You include key details for each item, including the stock-keeping unit (SKU), descriptions, sizes, colors, and price. The software lets you categorize these products to make them easy to manage.
- Inventory tracking: The IMS automatically tracks and updates stock levels in real time as orders pour into Pia’s Prints. If you have ten prints called Woodland Wonders and customers purchase 3 of them, the IMS will update the availability on Pia’s Prints website.
- Stock alerts and purchase orders: IMS can identify popular items and automatically create a purchase order when sales reach a specific threshold. Or, they can alert you to reorder the item. When the new item arrives, and you scan it into the system, the IMS will update the inventory to show it as available again.
- Order fulfillment: When a customer for Pia’s places an order, the IMS deducts the purchased items from the inventory count. It then creates a packing slip for the warehouse team. The software then tracks the order throughout the fulfillment process. It updates the customer with shipping and tracking information once the order is mailed.
- Returns management: Say a customer returns an item, a Woodland Wonders print, from Pia’s Prints. If the item is in good condition, Pia’s Prints can scan it, and the IMS will add it back to the inventory.
5 Standout IMS Features for Online Sellers
Along with the basics covered above, a great IMS will have five features alongside its core inventory management capabilities.
1. Integrations
Even though IMS can do a lot, it can’t do everything independently. A great IMS service will integrate with big players in the e-commerce space, like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Better still, it also integrates with manufacturing and order fulfillment services.
And big bonus points if it can use Zapier to integrate with any software or platform you choose.
As the owner of our imaginary online shop, Pia’s Prints, you might integrate your IMS with:
- Shopify (your e-commerce platform)
- ShipStation (your order fulfillment platform)
- FreshBooks (your accounting software)
- Salesmate (your CRM)
- HubEngage (the AI-powered chatbot that helps customers find what they need)
2. Advanced Analytics and Reporting
A great IMS service will offer robust analytics. These analytics should help you forecast demand, manage stock levels, and identify sales trends. Here are the core analytics and reporting features to look for:
- Demand forecasting: Use data on past sales, plus insights into current market trends, to accurately predict what customers will want in the future.
- Stock level management: See stock insights that help maintain the right inventory balance. Automate reorder alerts or purchase orders to help replenish stock before it runs out.
- Sales trend management: See current sales trends, seasonal demands, and customer preferences based on past and current data. This data helps you understand which products to promote, discount, or discontinue.
- Informed decision-making: Access intuitive dashboards and slice and dice data into various reports. These should help you see the overall health of your inventory and item-specific performance.
With these analytics and reporting tools in your pocket, you can keep items in stock and stay ahead of the market.
3. Customer Feedback Integration
It should be easy for you to incorporate customer feedback into your inventory management system. Customers are the people who keep our businesses going, after all. But who has time to comb through reviews and update their products and inventory manually? No one, that’s who.
Manual processes are incredibly time-consuming for an entrepreneur, especially when their focus needs to be on items that are moving the needle. They need to understand what their customers have to say about products and their experiences, but that information needs to be delivered to them rather than something for which they have to search.
That’s why customer feedback integration is key. A great IMS can integrate with your preferred product review apps. It should be able to use AI and NLP tools to analyze overall customer sentiments and pick out important customer concerns and preferences. You can then use these insights to improve your products, leading to an increase in positive customer feedback in the future.
4. Alignment with Marketing and Sales Strategies
A great IMS will support your B2B marketing efforts by identifying which products to promote—and to which customers. It should analyze inventory levels or your customers’ purchase history.
For example, we’ll say that Pia’s Prints can’t seem to sell its Sunrise Slumbers prints. Compared with popular prints like Woodland Wonders and Faithful Feathers, Sunrise Slumbers isn’t moving. Thankfully, your IMS at Pia’s Prints picks up on this. It suggests running a promotion on Sunrise Slumbers to help get the product out the door.
Another example is the shopping cart. Your IMS should be able to do a lot with your storefront’s shopping cart, including:
- Cart updates: The IMS should automatically update a customer’s cart to reflect a change in stock—like if the item goes out of stock before the customer checks out.
- Purchase history: IMS should be able to analyze a customer’s purchase history. It can use the information to create a customized shopping experience, for instance, by making suggestions for similar purchases within the shopping cart.
- Save for later: Can your customers move items from their shopping cart into a Save for Later section? If not, your IMS should be able to make it happen. Many customers want to buy the things they save for later—they just can’t swing it right away.
- Stock reservations: A robust IMS will allow customers to reserve an item for a limited time when they move it to their cart. So if Pia’s Prints only has two Woodland Wonders prints left, and a customer moves one to their cart, you can reserve the products for X time. After that time, the item may be purchased by someone else and removed from the cart.
5. Scalability and Flexibility
When you’re an e-commerce seller, your ultimate goal is to grow. Incremental growth is essential to the long-term sustainability of your business. You can’t depend on a product going viral, or lean too much into seasonal ‘rushes’ if you’re going to build a strong foundation.
Your IMS solution should grow with you. It shouldn’t be limited to one online storefront, a specific number of customers, or a certain number of products. You can start small and scale up within the same software when needed.
You should also be able to customize the IMS system to your company’s specific workflows, reporting needs, and user roles, for example. Instead of shoehorning your business to adapt to the software, the software should easily become what you need.
E-commerce Success is Within Reach
Your IMS should offer more than just basic functionality. It should integrate with your full suite of tools. It should align with your marketing efforts, help you act on customer insights, and grow with you.
Running an online store means avoiding cutting corners. Your investment in a feature-rich IMS will come back to you in spades. Because with a good IMS, you can turn a logistical nightmare into a successful and profitable operation.
Implement Online Inventory Management Software Now!
There is no doubt that businesses need web-based inventory management to succeed in the future. If you’re a startup, you actually have it easier than big companies that use complicated hardware. Even if you need to switch from a manual to an online approach, you invest time in your company’s future. Think long-term and not short-term!
How can Megaventory help?
We can’t wait to show you how it can make your life easier, and your business run smoother!
Author Bio
John is a seasoned digital marketing specialist with 8 years of experience
working in the trenches with high-growth SaaS startups to leading
enterprise companies like Zoominfo. When he’s not busy experimenting
new strategies in SEO, he usually spends time with his 7 dogs at home
sipping coffee.