​​Smart Stock, Big Sales: Best Practices for E-commerce Inventory Management

Inventory is not just a pile of products in a warehouse for any online merchant; it's the asset of your company. The way you handle it , can lead to a difference between huge sales and frustrating delays. Bad inventory management can bring lost customers, waste cash, and infinite headaches.

But what is "good" inventory management in the growing era of e-commerce? It's having the right products, in the right quantities, in the right location, at the right time. Let's talk about the smartest practices that smart sellers utilize globally to keep their inventory moving and their customers as an asset  

1. Know Your Numbers: Accurate & Real-Time Tracking

This is the golden rule of inventory. You can't control what you don't account for. Each item coming in, transferring, or going out of your inventory must be kept a count for.

Why it's necessary: Without accurate numbers, you might oversell (sell things you don't have) or undersell (having things but not indicating they are available). Both result in unsatisfied customers and lost sales.

Best Practice: Have a system that updates stock in real-time. The moment something is sold on any one of your marketplace, its quantity is updated automatically on all the other marketplace accounts and in your master records. This prevents human mistakes and assures customers always get accurate availability.

Mergekart's Edge: Our solution provides real-time, instant inventory synchronization across all your linked marketplaces and your site. That means you always have one accurate source of truth for your inventory, effectively eradicating overselling.

2. Predict the Future: Master Demand Forecasting

Although we can't really see the future, you can get close enough by examining your history. Knowing what customers will buy, and when, is the key to intelligent stocking.

Why it's important: Proper forecasting avoids selling out of best sellers in peak periods (losing sales) and avoids carrying too much slow-moving merchandise (tying up cash and space).

Best Practice: Use your past sales history. View trends from months or years ago, take into account season spikes (such as holiday seasons or certain shopping holidays worldwide), and include any promotions you are about to run. Programs that can interpret this information are priceless.

Mergekart's Advantage: By consolidating your sales data, Mergekart gives you the basis for improved forecasting. With visibility into sales performance in all channels, you have more accurate insights to forecast future demand and maximize your buying.

3. Smart Ordering: Set Reorder Points & Safety Stock

Don't let stock run out completely before reordering. astute sellers establish precise triggers to restock.

Why it's important: Being out of a best-selling item equates to missed sales and unhappy customers. Over-ordering equates to wasted cash on storage and possibly worthless stock.

Best Practice:

Reorder Points: For every product, determine the lowest stock level at which a fresh order is placed by your supplier. This level must take into account how long orders take to come in (lead time) and how many products you normally sell during that lead time.

Safety Stock: Maintain a small "buffer" of additional stock for best-sellers. This serves as protection against unplanned demand surges or supplier holdups.

Mergekart's Advantage: We don't dictate your reorder points, but our live tracking and reporting give you the accurate information to be able to calculate and monitor these points optimally. Our system makes you aware at the precise moment when stocks are low, so you can respond accordingly.

4. Maximize Your Storage: Streamlined Warehouse & Product Layout

Whether you have a huge warehouse or not, the way you set up your products is important. Streamlined storage saves time, minimizes mistakes, and accelerates fulfillment.

Why it's necessary: A disorganized or messy stock location is equivalent to more time looking for things, increased probability of picking mistakes, and slower order completion.

Best Practice:

Logical Organization: Keep similar items together. Put your best sellers where they're easiest to access.

Systematic Marking: Employ plain labels, barcodes, or SKUs for all items and storage positions.

FIFO (First-In, First-Out): For items that have expiration dates or become stale, sell the older inventory before newer inventory.

Mergekart's Edge: Mergekart doesn't organize your warehouse physically, but it gives you the digital foundation. With precise, system-tracked inventory, your picking and packing operations become necessarily more efficient regardless of your storage arrangement. You'll know what to pick and where it goes.

5. Centralize & Automate: Embrace Technology

Attempting to do inventory manually across numerous sales channels is a recipe for disaster when your business is expanding. The top sellers use technology to simplify everything.

Why it's necessary: Automation significantly eliminates human error, saves hundreds of hours, and allows for real-time accuracy that's impossible to accomplish manually.

Best Practice: Make an investment in an all-in-one e-commerce platform that brings together your sales channels, inventory, and order fulfillment. This establishes a "single source of truth" for all your business operations.

Mergekart's Edge: This is our expertise! Mergekart is meant to be that one core hub. With a single, intuitive dashboard, you can control product listings on every platform, real-time sync inventory, consolidate order fulfillment, and get insights you can really use. We exchange fragmented systems with a robust, unified solution that saves you time, minimizes errors, and enables you to sell smarter, worldwide.

Ready to make your inventory management a headache no more and a competitive edge?

Adopting these best practices, particularly with the proper technology, will provide you with total control over your inventory, resulting in fewer errors, more satisfied customers, and increased profits.