Inventory management is one of the keys to a successful retail operation. Retail inventory management techniques help stores keep customers happy, reduce costs and increase profits. Using these techniques successfully will allow you to reduce retail overhead in your C-store.
What Is Retail Inventory Management?
Retail inventory management is the process of ensuring you carry merchandise that shoppers want, with neither too little nor too much on hand. By managing inventory, retailers meet customer demand without running out of stock or carrying excess supply. It is a delicate balance and those most successful at it will continue to reduce their retail overhead, especially in the c-store capacity.
In practice, effective retail inventory management results in lower costs and a better understanding of sales patterns. Quantum uses retail inventory management tools and methods that provide c-store owners more information to run their businesses, including:
- Product locations
- Quantities of each product type
- Which stock sells and which doesn’t, by location and sales channel
- Profit margin by style, model, product line, or item
- The ideal amount of inventory to have on hand
- How many products to reorder and how often
- When to discontinue a product
- How changing seasons affect sales
What Is the Importance of Inventory Management in Retail?
Inventory management is crucial for c-stores because the practice helps to increase overall profits. From a strategic point of view, retail inventory management increases efficiency. Here’s why:
- Decreases Inventory Costs:
Knowing how much stock you have and how much you need can target inventory levels more accurately, thereby reducing storage and carrying costs. - Minimizes Out-of-Stocks:
To avoid disappointing customers and missing sales, C-Store retailers want to avoid running out of inventory. They can use inventory management tools to determine how much stock is “just right” to have on hand. - Improves Profit Margins:
When you understand your inventory based on statistics, you will lower your inventory costs. With lower inventory costs and enough supply to fill every order, retailers improve their profitability. - Prevents Spoilage and Obsolescence:
Inventory management helps retailers address when products expire or become obsolete. This can apply to perishables that have a limited shelf life, such as milk and meat, or a non-perishable that becomes unpopular because consumer tastes change. - Eases Supply Chain Management:
Having a close gauge on inventory and sales trends helps manage your supply chain more efficiently. Retail inventory management helps you determine your economic order quantity (EOQ), which is the ideal order size to minimize inventory costs. - Improves Customers Satisfaction:
When customers get the products they want faster with fewer mistakes or out-of-stocks, it increases customer loyalty.
Inventory Management Methods for Retailers
Inventory management methods help retailers generate maximum profits by reducing costs, improving efficiency, and understanding sales drivers. These methods optimize quantities purchased from suppliers, fine-tune fulfillment processes, strategically locate products, account for inventory, and analyze demand and sales patterns.
C-Stores that follow inventory management best practices have greater stock accuracy, lower costs, less shrinkage, and higher profit margins. Follow the advice of inventory experts, like Quantum Services, to increase your overall profits and reduce overhead.
Use an Inventory Management System:
By leveraging technology, you can automate many tasks and instantly make progress on goals such as accuracy and efficiency. By choosing the right systems, you can integrate your point-of-sale (POS) system with inventory management, eliminating the need for manual data entry, which will reduce errors and generate more accurate data. An automated system can also send notifications for stock alerts and simplify your efforts to coordinate inventory in multiple locations.
When it comes to C-Store auditing and inventory management, we literally wrote the book. Using proprietary software and specialized audit technology, we deliver the right data and detail you need to make the right decisions. Our tailored programs drive custom reporting that makes sense and provides immediate insights. And the hardware we use to collect data ensures accurate, consistent counts across every store. In addition to our people, it’s our technology that gives us a leg up on many internal audit programs – especially when it comes to flexibility, expense, and accuracy. Let us help you increase your profits and reduce your overhead!