Inventory Planning

Inventory planning is more difficult for medium-sized to large e-commerce firms and distributors. You might run a number of physical stores in various places in addition to a number of online sales outlets. You might have a sizable customer database or be planning to expand your business soon. Additionally, unexpected changes in the market might make managing your inventory much more difficult.

Defining Inventory Planning:

Along with order management, accounting, warehouse operations, and customer management, inventory management planning is a crucial component of a company's supply chain management strategy. Demand forecasting, as well as determining how much inventory to order and when, are all part of inventory planning. When done well, this enables businesses to meet demand while spending less. In other words, businesses may lower their overall storage costs, improve their inventory allocation processes, and guarantee that they always have enough inventory to fulfill customer demand by having the correct amount of inventory at the right time and in the right place (whilst avoiding surplus stock in obsolescence or overstocking).

Inventory Planning Challenges:

• Disparate data: Planning an inventory effectively necessitates the use of numerous sources of data. Additionally, it is a difficult process to combine all of this data. Inventory planners will need to assemble retail reports and historical data that may be scattered across numerous legacy systems.
• Guesswork: Predictions are seldom simple to make. Even with analytics technologies, guessing will always exist if the proper KPIs aren't in place to direct your inventory strategy. Additionally, unpredictably changing market conditions may add to the complexity of forecasting.
• Multiple locations: It can be difficult to distribute goods that are kept in different places. It can be tough to always know where to distribute your inventory without a good inventory tracking system.
• The human component: The entire solution is not technology. An inventory planner is ultimately in charge of inventory management planning. There is a lot of historical information that needs to be shared with the new leader when the position is taken over by someone else. The new planner will initially be less familiar with the brand than the departing planner, and he or she may find it difficult to comprehend the antecedents of the current inventory management system.

Benefits of Inventory Planning:

• Better Cash Flow
• Higher Profits
• Prevents Stealing

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