Real-time Inventory Count helps in Business Success

Real time inventory count is critical for any business and especially those that use an ERP. Any delays in updates of inventory figures could lead to failed transactions and a severely compromised customer experience.

While the case may be evident in the service sector for example in hotels where real time availability of facilities is important, the case is the strongest for adoption by the e-commerce industry.

Some SMB’s rely on outdated e-commerce tools that do not support real time transactions, billing, accounting and business records.

The right business solution

The solution is to use a state of the art ERP system that can track orders, stock, supplier information, sales, deliveries, and other relevant inventory records. 

Only integration of the ERP with the e-commerce solution either by being inbuilt into the ERP or creating appropriate connection interfaces is the way forward. With this integration, manual reconciliation is a thing of the past. Conflicts on inventory stocks between warehousing and sales no longer occur.

The E-Commerce domain

Customers too when they are searching on e-commerce sites ask for real time availability figures and are not willing to wait for information. Their failing to get information in a few seconds or getting incorrect information will lead to abandoned carts, dropped transactions, high bounce rate etc.

Shipping issues can get complicated when some items in an order are shipped and others are sent later. The cloud ERP can manage the different sub orders in real time.

When a customer returns a product, it is automatically updated in the inventory count. The CRM module in the ERP then interacts with the customer to get feedback. Product returns, exchanges or refunds are done automatically without manual reconciliation.

Issues without real time integration

The key issues that companies face without real time integration are:

• Inaccurate inventory count for sales
• Operational issues arise when order volumes increase and manual reconciliation takes a lot of time and errors will always tend to creep in
• Information silos are created without integration and the analytics features cannot reflect accurate data

Most businesses cannot hope to improve turnaround times, reduce duplication of effort, and expenses related to order fulfillment. This leads to fewer missed shipments, returns, and cancellations leading to greater business success.

E-Commerce and Versa Cloud ERP

A model with two standalone systems has a higher cost burden with a greater possibility for error. A disgruntled customer will tell ten more and amplify the damage to a large extent on social media. The damage done to the brand may take a while to repair and it may happen again. It makes better business sense to integrate all solutions into one in terms of operational efficiency too.

We at Versa have created a secure multi award winning cloud based comprehensive ERP solution that is e-commerce ready. Automatic real time inventory count is one of the many features in our integrated solution. Our ERP solution does not need a connector. It automatically integrates with shopping carts after set up.

We’d love to hear from you.

To know more, please visit www.versaclouderp.com or contact us directly.

Reference:

http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/2014/02/managing-your-e-commerce-inventory-how-do-cloud-erp-systems-support-real-time-inventory-information/

http://findaccountingsoftware.com/expert-advice/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-erp-and-ecommerce-integration/