How would you describe your inventory management practices? Would you call them good? Those practices can be even better when you are using SAP Business One. Built directly into the ERP system are ways to enhance the efficiency and productivity of your business, such as the Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) section of the program.
No one wants a poorly managed inventory, not when that one reason could cause your business to flounder. That’s why you should use SAP Business One to transform your inventory management practices and develop a profitable and efficient organization.
Common Challenges With Inventory Management
There are major hindrances that businesses face each day with their inventory. Those obstacles can be:
- Poor warehouse organization
- Too much inventory
- Unknown item location
- Unknown item availability
- Inaccurate item tracking
- Out-of-stock items
Unfortunately, there might come a time when each of these obstacles happens at the same time. No one would deny that such an experience would be a nightmare. The good news is that when you have SAP Business One, you can overcome these common challenges and develop sound inventory management practices.
Get The Best Practices in Inventory Management with SAP Business One
The SAP B1 ERP system is a comprehensive enhancement to every inventory management practice that you have. The benefit of the system comes largely from the integrations with other programs. For example, the accounting department gains real-time data from SAP Business One, allowing them to accurately monitor the value of the inventory. Sales representatives can check up on item availability while on the phone with a potential client.
When your employees are aware of such things, your business will run much more seamlessly, and you will see more profit at the end of the day.
Here are how the features of SAP Business One improve inventory management practices:
Real-Time Inventory Data Management
Using internet-connected barcode scanners and integrated programs, you can track arrivals and shipped items automatically. SAP Business One includes an inventory barcode scanning system to simplify data management. You also get reports of where those items have been stored, where it is headed, and when it is transported to another facility. Since this data is synced to SAP Business One, real-time updates are available on any connected device at the location.
This means that accounting, administration, and workers on the warehouse floor have all the same information at the same time. You’ll see improved communication, productivity, and efficiency.
Material Requirements Planning
Any business that produces products needs to ensure that the raw materials needed for manufacturing remain at optimum levels. Any out-of-stock situation could be costly. That is where material requirements planning (MRP) comes in, but doing it daily and by hand can be risky.
Material requirements planning is a process that looks at manufactured or purchased items and determines which items should be bought or produced to satisfy a particular demand.
SAP Business One MRP wizard calculates inventory item demand with:
- Sales orders
- Inventory data
- Bill-of-Materials (BOM) data
- Forecasts
- Purchase orders
- Scheduled production orders
The MRP wizard also lets you consider options for purchase or production planning. For example, you can select the period of time you would like to plan for. This means you can select a time frame of 2 months or a year to procure or produce. Additionally, SAP Business One can configure reordering points based on consumption cycle averages. You can select these points to eliminate unnecessary purchases and reduce inventory costs.
Do note that if you want to run the SAP B1 MRP wizard correctly, you must set up the items within the Item Master Record for the MRP via the Planning tab.
Optimized Inventory
The best SAP Business One practices in inventory management stems from this one benefit: your inventory is optimized. The accuracy of SAP Business One reporting and item counting is unmatched. You can get detailed information about inventory and shipments between warehouses and schedule transfers. Tracking product movements means that you always have an eye on the stock levels of your most popular items.
SAP Business One can also identify products that aren’t selling as fast as others and help you liquidate the stock effectively, saving you both storage space and money.
Costing Features
When you have multiple clients each with separate quotes, you need a program that can manage each pricing list. SAP Business One is capable of sorting listings with different prices in a variety of currencies.
Stock Movement Management
Maintain logistics and finances with SAP Business One. The system records goods in and goods out and supplements that with documentation. Stock levels changes and pricing is also automatically tracked and updated. You are never unaware of stock levels.
Furthermore, you can optimize the inventory to eliminate stock-outs and surpluses. SAP Business One determines the ideal minimum and maximum stock levels then alerts you whenever it is time to reorder a product. It will also provide an estimate of how many items to order at one time, so the best amount of inventory is available.
Conclusion
While coming up with the best practices in inventory management can be difficult by yourself, SAP Business One can improve your business from the start. The system is loaded with features that support your organization from the ground up. Wisys understands that implementing such a system could be both momentous and challenging, which is why we have come up with proven methods and programs to make SAP Business One implementation less disruptive and faster.
Give us a call today to learn more about the SAP Business One services we provide.