Modern e-commerce warehousing services offer many benefits to small retail businesses. And while these benefits generally impact all aspects of business positively, some benefits are specifically related to inventory management.
Warehousing inventory management is the process of receiving, storing, and tracking inventory in a warehouse. It also involves managing warehouse staff and optimizing storage space and costs. In turn, these activities directly impact your company’s order fulfillment, shipping, and customer experience.
Managing inventory is a small part of what warehousing service providers do, but it impacts nearly all other aspects of business operations. For instance, how well inventory management is done can directly impact your logistics costs and how efficiently your supply chain works. Many warehouses include technology that can:
- Optimize inventory levels, even accounting for anticipated changes in demand.
- Track inventory in real time, providing accurate information to your company and the end consumer.
- Generate inventory reports that allow you to plan better.
- Automate the order picking and shipping processes to speed up time to delivery.
Because of the benefits that warehousing can provide, many small direct-to-consumer companies now outsource this function to third-party e-commerce warehousing providers.
E-commerce warehousing offers the following benefits related to managing inventory.
- Increased accuracy with order fulfillment: Timely and accurate order fulfillment is the cornerstone of any business. A failure in this task means you will have an unsatisfied customer. Repeatedly doing this can damage your brand reputation and put you out of business. However, warehouses are often well-planned and managed, meaning they can process orders quickly and accurately, providing customers with a positive experience. And this often means they will be more likely to order from your company again or share information about their positive experience with others – which is one of the best ways to build up your brand reputation and increase your customer base.
- Faster shipping and deliveries: Just like e-commerce warehousing can boost the speed at which orders are fulfilled, it can also increase shipping speed. Your warehousing partner can often provide suggestions to boost shipping speeds, such as adding processes to speed up last-mile delivery, automating order processing, and expanding your distribution network by keeping inventory across multiple fulfillment centers. Inventory tracking tools can also enable automatic stock reordering when levels get low and push shipping information directly to the customer. This frees up your time to focus on other business aspects.
- Increased productivity: Warehousing service providers often have advanced data management tools, which can provide you with up-to-minute accurate data. These tools take the manual labor out of tracking inventory, but they also increase accuracy, which means you and your team can focus on strategic business goals, such as expansion and growth. And with the ability to know at any minute which products are in stock and which are low, you can better plan for future sales. In addition, many warehousing providers also track consumer habits and trends, which can help you plan better for expected consumer preferences.
- Reduced costs: While it may be tempting to think that with all of the benefits that e-commerce warehouses can provide, accessing these services may be cost-prohibitive, this isn’t the case. Outsourced warehousing often saves time and money, improving supply chain profit margins. In fact, proper warehousing inventory management can save you on labor, storage, and fulfillment costs – all of which save you money in the big picture. These warehouses can also help you optimize the performance of your entire supply chain by implementing technology and organizing inventory. This benefit can give you a tremendous edge over competitors in a highly competitive marketplace.
- Increased customer satisfaction: In many instances, the increased accuracy and speed of order fulfillment can directly impact customer satisfaction. It also reduces the likelihood of returns or damaged products, which may also reduce your overall costs. The bottom line is that your customers will receive the products they order quickly, which is a huge part of keeping them happy. In the event of a return, warehouses often ensure that this process moves as seamlessly as possible – a benefit that can turn a negative customer experience into a positive one. No matter how you look at it, these services improve your ability to keep customers happy and returning for more business.
As you can see, there are many benefits to e-commerce warehousing, especially related to managing inventory. To learn more about how these services can benefit your company, contact Dawson Logistics today.