As a successful eCommerce merchandiser, you understand how easy it is to get lost in the seemingly never-ending flow of data available at your fingertips.
From site traffic, analytics, search engine rankings, and a host of other data points, it’s your job to design an attractive and functional site that draws customers in and entices them to buy.
But your job doesn’t stop there. Employing an effective inventory management strategy is just as important to your overall goals as the task of finding ways to land on Google’s first page when potential customers are searching for a certain product.
And with inventory management, stocking too many units of an item is just as egregious as being out of stock. Even giant companies like Target struggle with inventory management, as shown when the company recently sold out of a hyped apparel promotion in only a few hours.
This is why it's important to consider implementing some of these inventory management strategies to increase your overall return on investment (ROI):
Integrate Product Flow
When just starting out, it’s common for inventory to be handled manually, where items are counted on a regular basis and stock levels adjusted as the situation warrants.
But as your company grows, it’s important to have an integrated system that links your online shopping cart with inventory management and accounting to keep up with real-time inventory status.
Simplified Data Management is Key
When your business grows, the good news is obvious: you're making more money. The bad news can be that you start to lose control of the little things that make for an amazing shopping experience for your customers.
This is when it's time to consider using software to implement a system that can integrate all of the data that's available (social media, web analytics, inventory, etc.) and parse it out for inventory management, catalog creation, and website design.
You may already be using an inventory management tool like IBM WebSphere Commerce, but with a visual add-on tool like Smart Merchandiser, you can easily organize the data from sales reports, web traffic, analytics, and social media trends to keep you ahead of the sales curve.
Smart Merchandiser works to improve the shopping experience on your site while enabling you to adjust individual pages on your site with easy drag-and-drop functionality. When products begin running low, Smart Merchandiser uses a simple color-coded system to alert you to the changes in inventory so that you can update the color default swatch for individual products and rearrange product placement based on real-time data.
Focus on Just-in-Time Inventory Management
Depending on the size of your company, it can cost a fortune to warehouse products while waiting for sales to happen. But by developing a robust just-in-time inventory management system, digital merchandisers can maintain more profitable inventory levels.
To be successful at this kind of balancing act, however, you need to be able to accurately predict the factors that lead to sales fluctuations. While it can take some time to develop an effective strategy, once employed, it can save money and still leave you confident that stock will be available when it's needed and reduced when demand isn't as high.
Visual Add-on Tool
Whether you’re selling shoes, ink cartridges, or refurbished iPads, it’s not reasonable to expect that you can be an expert at analyzing and managing all of the various data functions involved in running an integrated digital merchandising campaign.
This is why choosing to use a visual add-on tool in addition to your IBM WebSphere Commerce implementation makes sense when it comes to meeting today's digital inventory management challenges.
A plug-and-play solution like Smart Merchandiser requires little, if any, specialized coding, meaning your online store operations can be up optimized to stabilize inventory management and improve profit margins in no time.
Download The Digital Merchandiser’s Guide to Maximizing Margins with Visualized Data eBook today to learn more!
