Efficient inventory management is key to business productivity. Although it’s a very straightforward process when led through predefined standards, many start-ups find it difficult to learn them.

It’s important to remember that inventory management isn’t merely accounting; in fact, it’s more to do with being able to make projections. While it’s important for businesses to have enough inventory to meet market demand, having too much can add up to expensive overhead costs. On the other hand,not having enough stock can lead to a loss of sales. To handle this, here are five solutions start-ups can try to carry out an efficient inventory management process.

Follow An Appropriate Inventory Strategy

Depending on your warehouse or storage space and its capacity, try to have an inventory method that works best for the nature of your business. For example, if your start-up sells perishable products like flowers or food, then go for a FIFO (First In First Out) strategy, where you will take out and dispatch inventory that went in first.

FIFO is one of the most common inventory management strategies used by startups and is also a cost-effective strategy for many types of businesses.

Use Value-Adding Service In Storage Units

If you take warehouse options like a self-storage facility, they are known to be extremely cost-effective for startups. This is why it’s becoming a much sought-after option among freelancers and self-employed individuals. One of the many benefits of these storage units is their range of other value-adding services they offer for commercial tenants. Two such value-adding services that make inventory management efficient are pickup and order fulfilment.

Under pick up services, the storage company will pick up inventory on your behalf and cross-load them into your storage units. Order fulfilment is where these companies will pack and deliver the inventory at their storage facilities to your customers on your behalf, making sales extremely efficient. These services also reduce the extra cost startups will have to incur if they are getting them independently done from somewhere else or having their own manpower or professionals to handle them.

Track Stock Levels

Effectively and accurately tracking the inventories in a storage facility – whether they are to be used for product development or for sales can help inventory managers fine-tune their inventory management process more efficiently. This allows inventories to maintain a consistent balance without being over or understocked.

Most importantly it alerts inventory managers when there is a need for restocking, which prevents startups from losing potential sales. While this makes the whole inventory management process efficient in line with market demand it also allows start-ups to monitor sales frequencies.

Use A Barcode System

This allows startups to accurately and efficiently count and track both incoming and outgoing inventory. All that needs to be done is to read the barcodes through a handheld scanner. As it is automated, it avoids errors, is less time-consuming and minimises the need for manual labour to handle the process.

The barcode tracks inventory data such as size, colour, location, place of production and even the expiration date. This allows start-ups to fulfil orders while being mindful of the expiry dates. Moreover, as bar codes can perform inventory counts quicker, the time taken to process and fulfil orders is also less.

Apart from these, having access to professional warehouses or storage facilities also support startups with efficient inventory solutions. Professional storage units are more organised, safer, and provide appropriate maintenance to keep your inventories in good condition to facilitate hassle-free inventory processing.