4 best practices of inventory management in supermarkets

4 best practices of inventory management in supermarkets

Inventory management is the most challenging part for supermarkets, grocery retail stores, and convenience stores. If gone wrong, it disturbs the entire operations. Moreover, it dissatisfies the customers, leaving a negative impression on them or customers stop coming to the store.

You do not want to be in an out-of-stock situation. Or, you do not even want to overload the inventory, which does not get sold. So, the best solution is to plan it well, considering the nature of the products you sell.

We provide some best practices to adopt to control your inventory movement and manage it well from Day 1.

Balance the store space between short shelf-life and long shelf-life products

Do a demand planning to understand the demand for your short and long shelf-life products. Based on this, fill up the store display space dedicated to long shelf-life products. While you know it might be not enough for the next few weeks, you can keep it in the backroom to replenish it immediately.

For the shorter shelf-life products such as vegetables, fruits, bread, curd, etc., allocate enough shelf space so that you can replenish them as and when they get emptied. Additionally, you can manage your own ‘best-before’ or ‘sell-by-date’ filters or labels to keep a tight check on them.

Demand forecasting is your actual performance measure

You can feed customers’ data and their shopping behaviour characteristics in the ERP system. The database stores this data and keeps it safe and secure. You can analyse this data further and generate insights.

You can understand changes in customers’ demands and thus order a fresh supply of merchandise accordingly. You can also design your marketing strategies based on customer behaviour and enhance their shopping experience.

Managing all business operations

One sector where you need to be excellent is demand forecasting. But, for grocery stores and supermarkets, granular forecasting is essential. This means you need to develop forecasts for months, weeks, and days to factor in all types of product groups.

You must use advanced data analysis techniques to manage it. Factor in the recurring demand patterns because of weekends, holidays, or seasons. Also, consider the external factors, such as weather or local events, on product demands. You must contemplate the effect of internal business decisions and competitive forces to forecast the market demand as accurately as possible.

Such detailed, granular level forecasting enhances the processes of:
• Replenishment
• Capacity management
• Flow of delivery
• Allocation of inventory
• Space planning
• Assortment planning

Purchase an ERP system for managing your inventory well

One of the best solutions for efficient inventory management is implementing an ERP system. Software will keep your inventory in check and forecast demand correctly and on time. These two things, if managed well, will satisfy the customers.

You need a system with the following features:
• Stock analytics, real-time stock tracker, and feature of status change to manage the inventory efficiently
• Customer profiling, customer purchase behaviour analysis, and customer follow-up monitoring to improve customer relationships
• A point-of-sale feature for payment enhancement, transaction completion, and sales tracking
• In-built features to design loyalty programs for customers to allocate points and use them in future purchases
• Employee management, marketing strategizing, business insights and analytics, and many other features make your supermarket operations efficient.

And for all these features and functionalities, you need not look elsewhere. Websys’ ERP system for supermarkets and grocery stores is sufficient for your inventory management needs. You enjoy trouble-free operations with reduced costs, increased sales, and happy customers.

With Websys ERP, you automate your operations greatly, thereby reducing your management costs. Your POS functionality improves, and you can enjoy a better accounting system for monitoring the real-time financial situation of the store. And with loyalty programs, discount options, and customer profiling, you can keep your customers happy.

The traditional method of store inventory management still works

You will be adopting technology and an ERP system to manage inventory accuracy, timeliness, and reliability. But the traditional method is never outdated. You must schedule daily checks of your store to avoid any display issues.

Also, such monitoring helps to check the physical condition of items on display. If there are damages in the packaging or the item is not in the allocated space, the staff can correct it.

Adopt the above four best practices to manage your inventory in the best way possible.