What you’ll learn:
- Manual reordering processes and supplier traps that could be costing your business money and time
- How automated stock replenishment works
- Automated purchase order formulas you can choose from
- How an automated stock replenishment solution can benefit your business
- A quick audit on whether your business is hurting from manual, outdated stock processes
Stock ordering decisions that are damaging your bottom line
Stock replenishment plays a strategically critical role in minimising the time lag that increasingly demanding consumers need to wait for the products they want.
Unfortunately, many multi-store retailers are still basing reordering decisions on gut instinct or falling for common traps:
- Buying items because a supplier offers a discounted price based on quantity.
- Allowing suppliers to influence inventory by letting them reorder for you when in-store.
- Purchasing the same quantity of items no matter what size, colour or season.
- Delegating buying decisions to Store Managers without arming them with the right knowledge and tools.
Manually managing stock replenishment across multiple stores and locations can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, making the likelihood of errors extremely high. And if you’re wanting to expand stores or channels, that only adds the need for extra resources to manage inventory and replenishment.
It’s simply not a scalable system for growth. But there’s another way.
Automating your stock replenishment based on data
Stock reorder levels should be based on real-world data that factors in how much has been sold historically, which is why a retailer needs to implement an intelligent reordering process that automatically creates purchase orders for you. Automated stock replenishment solutions like Retail Express’ means you can expand your inventory, channels and business without needing to factor in extra resources for what was once a manual task.
With automated stock replenishment, retailers have the option of automating their purchase orders based on several formula types:
- Daily Run Rate formula: A unique algorithm factoring in average quantity sold per day, inventory already on order, current stock transfers (inventory in transit from other stores) and supplier lead time to automatically calculate the optimum quantity to reorder.
- Previous Sales Periods: Reorders the same quantity as sold in a previous sales period — great for seasonal products or indenting inventory management.
- Minimum Stock Levels (‘Safety Stock’): The quantity of your core inventory that you want to have on hand at all times. This is a more manual method but one that can be pulled by powerful analytics.
Automating your stock data analysis and purchase order process means you and your staffs’ previous hard work is done for you, resulting in some serious benefits for your business:
- Reduced administrative and processing costs previously spent on labour and manual systems.
- Improved stock rotation by reducing slow-moving inventory and providing more space to display fast-moving products.
- Flexible, comprehensive reporting that provides clear measurement and tracking for your suppliers and fulfilment.
- A superior customer experience by ensuring your supply matches customer demand
- Issues and anomalies are quickly identified. Easily investigate and determine the source of low run rates across your stores.
- Increased staff capacity and productivity by saving up to 50% of labour time previously spent on manual stock ordering tasks.
- Revenue growth through removing the risk of overstocks and understocks, maximising the return on investment, reduce the need for clearance sales.
- Scalable growth that allows you to expand your operation without needing to invest in administrative resources.
Identify if your retail business needs an automated stock replenishment solution
Take a moment to review the following issues and indications of poor stock control and think about how much time, resources, and revenue you’re losing to manual stock ordering processes:
- Your product availability has recurringly been low and you’re frequently adding stock to clearance sales due to overstocking.
- There’s considerable employee resourcing being spent on stock replenishment tasks.
- A significant amount of investment is tied up in inventory that’s not selling
- Replenishment expenses are consistently high.
By arming your retail business with reliable, real-time data and systems to automate replenishment using proven algorithms, you can transform your business efficiency, return on investment and customer experience.
At Retail Express, we have helped our clients to implement automated replenishment and become leading forces in their industry. You can book a free demo today to be taken through our inventory management system and how your specific business can utilise our automated replenishment solution, by an experienced retail expert.
