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With the Christmas sales boom fast-approaching, companies of all sizes are gearing up to accommodate higher volumes of business worldwide. Of course, managing all those orders will come with the hassle of dealing with a heightened burden on employees who handle customer support and inventory management. Everyone wants the revenue that comes with the holiday season, but few business managers enjoy the hustle and bustle that ensues as a result. That being said, here are four inventory management techniques that let you use the power of technology to reduce workload, increase accuracy, and maximize customer satisfaction rates during the upcoming holiday rush:
1. Assigning Product Codes
If you don’t yet have a product coding system in place, now would be a good time to look into that. At a bare minimum, you could use a simple barcode generator to assign codes to each of your items, which will drastically speed up the process of completing transactions. With each product having a unique barcode that you can scan, you won’t have to worry about the possibility of typing in the wrong product code or encountering other human errors that reduce the accuracy of inventory tracking and shipping.
2. Shipping Through Fulfillment Warehouses
Another great way to streamline the inventory management process is by utilizing third-party fulfillment warehouses like Amazon FBA. This would allow you to take a hands-off approach to packing and shipping products. Your customer places an order and the information is forward directly to the fulfillment services, who then locatethe product in their warehouses, apply shipping labels, and send it to the customer, without any additional input or effort on your behalf. These warehouses utilize advanced inventory management technology to ensure expeditious and accurate processing every time.
3. Pre-Packing Products
If you have products that you know are going to sell, why not go ahead and place them in the shipping area, or even go ahead and put a few in boxes. You don’t necessarily need to seal the boxes beforehand – as you may need to add more products before shipping – but you can make things easier on yourself just by having them near the packing area. Alternatively, you can place them in larger boxes ready to be combined with other products. After all, if you know that a product is going to be shipped out at some point during the holiday rush, why not have them ready to ship instead of tucked away in their normal inventory location?
4. Stock Organization
Just as bringing certain products to the shipping area is a good idea, it’s also wise to make sure all your inventory is properly organized before the order onslaught begins. This might include sorting products in alphabetical order, consolidating product categories, and using inventory organization software to keep track of where everything is located.
Holidays are the Wrong Time for Inventory Management Problems
No company wants to be left in a bad situation during the holiday season, as this is the best time of the year to increase revenue and brand awareness. Thus, be sure to try at least a couple of the recommendations above to ensure you’re adequately prepared.
We are influencers and brand affiliates. This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.
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