Your time is money, and wasted time ends up costing business owners in lots of ways. One place labor hours add up is with inventory management tasks. Performing multiple inventory counts can cost businesses a lot of money. Manual inventory counts take a lot of labor hours that could be better spent doing other things. They also often require production, fulfillment, shipping and other processes to come to a full stop until the count is complete.
How Manual Inventory Counts Can Hurt Your Business
Risk of errors with manual inventory counts
Manual inventory counts take too long and have too much room for human error. If you’re operating on a large scale, your business can’t function the way it should if you’re still relying on manual inventory counts. As your business grows, you need to be able to scale up your inventory and that means switching to an automated system that has the ability to track inventory in real-time and provide consistent updates without errors.
Reliance on employees for manual inventory counts
Manual inventory counts rely on multiple employees to be present in the warehouse. Employee shortages, sickness or vacation time can wreak havoc on your inventory count if you are still using a manual count system. When you are understaffed or when employees are taking sick time or vacation time you will either need to postpone the inventory count, train someone else to take over or do it yourself. If an inventory count doesn’t get done, you will probably end up carrying too much inventory, which comes with its own unique set of costs and problems.
Manual inventory counts slow down other business processes
When you rely on manual inventory counts it can slow down other parts of your business. Since manual inventory counts can require production, fulfillment and shipping to stop, orders can start to back up and not be filled in a timely manner. Customers are used to getting their items fast, sometimes even the same day, and if have to close down your business to perform a manual inventory count, your order fulfillment will slow down too and you could be losing sales.
The Solution: Automated Inventory Management System
An automated inventory management system is part of a suite of services designed to keep your business operating efficiently and promote regular growth. It is one of the best investments you can make in your business because it gives you the ability to do inventory counts, fulfill orders, and track your metrics in real-time without costing you money or additional labor hours. An automated inventory management system provides real-time inventory count updates and other useful metrics that streamline warehouse processes and ensures that your business is operating at a fast and efficient pace.
Manual counts are inefficient and costly. Why waste more resources on them? See how making the switch to an automated inventory management system can help your business scale up to the next level. Contact us today to learn more!