Warehouse management is a tedious and taxing part of any business, but thanks to the expanding world of warehouse management software, you can automate a large aspect of your workload and save time, money, and stress. Here are a few hidden benefits to implementing inventory management software in your company.

1. Better Relationships

Both your vendors and customers can benefit from your use of sales inventory management software. You’ll be able to reduce wait time at the docks and will have numbers at your fingertips for meeting with vendors. Additionally, you can more accurately order your products and more easily fulfill orders for your customers, improving relationships and your general reputation.

2. Consistent Improvement

To stay relevant in our fast-moving world, businesses have to constantly be evolving. Putting an inventory management system in place makes it much easier to know where your business stands so that you can improve sales and analytics. Automatic updates will reduce the need for IT staff, and the cloud makes it easy to save your data.

3. Better Visibility

Knowing exactly where every piece of inventory is located is almost impossible without a good inventory management software. The increased traceability helps you keep track of damaged items or those near expiration and will let you know exactly what products are where. It will also be more simple to predict your future needs.

4. Improved Security

Putting management software in place makes it easier to connect a specific employee with what products they have handled. If anything ever comes up damaged or missing, it will be much quicker and easier to track down who’s responsible. You can also identify where your business’s needs aren’t being met and address them.

5. Better Employee Morale

Having a sales inventory management system can do wonders for employee morale. You’ll always know exactly where you stand and can communicate the numbers to your workers, and they’ll find it much easier to perform their jobs when everything is accounted for. The workplace will become less stressed and safer overall.

6. Reduced Expenses

Perhaps the biggest benefit to a sales inventory management system is the money you get to save! You can more simply determine the best use of your team and space, so you only order the equipment you need and don’t have to overwork your employees. You’ll also save money on inventory by reducing over-ordering.

Inventory management software can be a game-changer for your business, and these are just a handful of benefits you can experience. Implementing a software like this is one of the easiest and fastest ways to improve your business, so it should be one of the very next things you take into consideration. DEAR has been working with business owners for years to help grow companies and improve efficiency. Contact us today for more information about DEAR, our services, and what we can do for your company.

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5 Ways Cloud Inventory Management Software Helps Your Business Grow

How Inventory Software Gives You More Control Over Your Business

As a business owner, you have thousands of numbers to keep track of, from pricing figures to overhead costs and everything in between. One of the most time-consuming tasks is keeping track of your inventory.

Luckily, advances in technology have brought forth new ways to make inventory management easier, giving you more time and peace of mind to run your business successfully.

Taking advantage of cloud inventory management software can help you grow your business in ways you never thought possible. Here are five benefits to using this incredible technology.

1. More Accurate than Manual Tracking

While there is no way a business can operate without human employees, it’s no secret that we are fallible. Inaccurate inventory tracking can cause a huge mess for your business.

Between finding the error and fixing it, you can find that you’ve wasted invaluable time. With a reliable cloud inventory management software, you can deploy immediately and reduce or almost eliminate these mistakes, giving you a trustworthy number every time.

2. Get Your Data in Real-Time

In this fast-moving world, you want the most up-to-date information at your fingertips. This isn’t always possible with manual tracking, but by integrating management software into your business, you’ll always have access to the most current numbers. Having the real-time numbers allows you to make more informed business decisions and speak to both customers and vendors with more accuracy and confidence.

3. Lower Costs

The right cloud inventory management software can help reduce your business’s costs all around. Namely, you aren’t having to pay people to do the job, but you can instead pay a smaller fee to have the software at your disposal. You’ll also save on products, as you know what’s selling and what isn’t. Additionally, this will be a fixed cost for you, making it easier to budget and giving you peace of mind about your output.

4. Better Business Decisions

Thanks to the money you’ll be saving, you’ll be able to invest more in the right products. You can see your statistics and analytics with the push of a button, making it quick and easy for you to know which products to keep purchasing and which to hold off on. This is also a huge advantage when it comes to meeting with vendors both current and potential, as you’ll have an up-to-date picture on where your business stands.

5. Saving Your Sanity

There’s no question that running a business can be stressful. When you don’t have to spend precious time, money, and resources on inventory management, you’ll have much more energy to spend where it really matters: advertising, securing vendors, and expansion.

While cloud inventory management softwarehas many more advantages, these are some of the biggest factors. Having this information at your fingertips is vital in an ever-changing world, and this technology could be the turning point in your business, helping you to expand and grow to new heights.

DEAR multi-module cloud inventory management software can transform your business and help you reach the next level through streamlined growth.

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5 Good Reasons to Start Using DEAR Inventory Management Software

How Inventory Software Gives You More Control Over Your Business

As a business owner or manager, you have a thousand things on your mind every single day. Between inventory numbers, relations with vendors, ad campaigns and more, it can be overwhelming to try to keep track of it all.

This is where inventory management software comes in. It makes it easier than ever to keep track of your products, giving you more control over your business. Here are a few of the biggest benefits to upgrading to the latest inventory management software.

1. More Accurate Numbers

Manual inventory tracking can be subject to mistakes, but with a reliable software, you’ll get the right numbers every time. This will save you time and money since you won’t have to fix errors, and you can better allocate your resources. You’ll also have a better idea of what products to reorder, and the issues of over- and under-ordering will be a thing of the past. Countless resources will be saved by simply addressing the issue of your numbers.

2. More Efficiency

By implementing inventory management software, your business will become exponentially more efficient. You’ll have near immediate access to your numbers, simplifying the process of ordering new inventory. Additionally, you can spend less time preparing for meetings with vendors, as your figures will all be in one convenient place. You’ll also be able to fulfill orders more quickly and easily, improving relationships with your customers.

3. Track Sales Patterns with Ease

You need to be able to quickly evaluate what’s happening to your products. What’s selling and what’s not? What is in demand during certain times of the year? Inventory management software makes it easy to track these trends and order your products accordingly. Having this advantage can improve your business model for years to come, helping you expand your business beyond what you ever thought possible. You can also identify whether there’s been any theft in your company and address these issues quickly.

4. Maintain Better Relationships

Two of the most important business relationships are those with your customers and your vendors. Using inventory management software can solidify both of these vital partnerships. Having better control of your inventory means you can avoid over- or under-ordering, so your customers will know you’re reliable and quick to deliver. Additionally, you’ll have fast and accurate access to your numbers when dealing with existing or potential vendors, presenting you as an authority in your field.

Inventory management software can prove to be a critical tool in today’s world, keeping your company on the cutting edge and ensuring success. Save time, money, and sanity by streamlining your inventory management, and use this phenomenal technology to your advantage to put yourself at the forefront of your industry. This software can give you more control of your business and keep you on the right track toward your goals.

For more information on how to implement inventory management software into your business, contact DEAR today.

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5 Good Reasons to Start Using DEAR Inventory Management Software

A Look at Upkeep: Three Tips to Manage Your Warehouse Organization

DEAR Inventory Management Software

It’s no secret that inventory management can be one of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of running a business. From paying an employee to handle these numbers to dealing with potential errors and trying to keep your information up-to-date, it can sometimes feel like too much to handle.

Luckily, DEAR inventory management software can streamline your process and save you time, money, and sanity. Here are five reasons you should implement inventory management software into your business.

1. It Saves You Money Through Automation

At the end of the day, your business has to make money to be successful. Inventory software eliminates having to pay an employee to track your numbers, and the cost of the software itself can be far more predictable for your budget. You’ll also be able to save by not ordering too much inventory and ensuring your “taxable income” is up-to-date come tax time. You’ll be amazed at the level of automation that’s possible with DEAR inventory software. 

2. It Saves You Time

Between everything else you have to do to keep your business running, inventory management can be one of the most tedious tasks. Having a software to track your products saves you tons of time and gives you the most accurate information at the touch of a button. You can use this saved time to grow your business through vendor meetings and planning new campaigns.

3. It Reduces Errors

Humans are vital to running a successful business, but sometimes we mess up. Save time and energy by introducing a software that’s guaranteed to give you the right numbers every day. This is another way inventory management software saves you time; you won’t have to spend invaluable moments fixing mistakes and adjusting numbers.

4. It Makes You More Dependable

Inventory management software gives you correct numbers quickly, making you a valuable partner to your vendors. You’ll be able to run meetings with ease and show where you stand, improving your business relationships. It will also be far easier to identify which vendors’ products are the most valuable to you and which you may be able to do without.

5. It Provides Peace of Mind

All of these other factors boil down to one main advantage: you’ll have more peace of mind. Inventory management can make or break a company, and once you’ve figured out that piece of the puzzle, you’ll have a much easier time of managing your business.

You’ll create better relationships with customers and vendors, you’ll spend less time fixing mistakes, and you’ll have more energy to create exciting promotions and campaigns.

Having reliable inventory management software can be vital to managing and expanding your business. This incredible technology will improve every aspect of your company, saving your sanity and making it infinitely easier to see where you stand in terms of numbers.

For more information on what our inventory management software can do for your business, contact us today or start a free 14-day trial.

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A Look at Upkeep: Three Tips to Manage Your Warehouse Organization

How do You Design Your Warehouse Space for Maximum Efficiency?

Your warehouse organization requires periodic management and review. You can’t just craft the perfect layout and stick to it forever without running into a few obstacles on the way.

Fortunately, consistent inventory management upkeep isn’t difficult. It just takes a bit of patience. Below we cover three simple tips for keeping your warehouse nice and organized, from the ground floor to the backend system.

Establish a Routine

Consistent warehouse upkeep is not going to be at the front of your thoughts. So many other things are going to get in the way, and it is almost always easy to push off basic upkeep for another day- and another.

We recommend setting up a routine day of the week or month to cover upkeep. You could do it every Tuesday, you could do it once a month, you could separate different tasks across a few days. Regardless of your method, the important thing is you stick to it. Prioritize it in your schedule. Set aside time for regular reviews and don’t let something else get in the way if you can realistically avoid it.

Functionality

Take time to organize your warehouse by functionality. This is a pivotal part of warehouse management and upkeep. Functionality refers to the basic idea that the warehouse is doing its job to the right degree. Are things efficient? Can you find items in an appropriate time?

Functionality refers to placement, width of aisles, height, and much more. A common example is shelf placement. You should spend time putting your top-ticket items between waist and shoulder height. You should also have a convenient place to put damaged goods.

Always take some time to review your warehouse with functionality in mind. Does it do its job and is it efficient? Upkeep is a whole lot more than cleaning. You can periodically review the space for trouble spots and places where the functionality isn’t up to par.

Checklist

A checklist is one of the easiest ways to stay on top of important inventory management upkeep. Also, it is the cleanest and simplest tool for task management and allocation. Finally, checklist is instantly scalable. Simply add another page!

Of course, many warehouse managers already have a checklist. But active utilization is so important. If you don’t hold workers accountable and stick to the checklist, it loses its power and use.

Below are some tasks you can add to start your own checklist today.

• Sweep the floors

• Check the forklifts

• Empty recycling

• Clear racks

• Dust aisles

• Remove obsolete product

• Mark damaged items

• Clean yard

• Check shelves for security

• Sanitize

A check list serves a few functions. For one, it allows you to put on paper all the small and big things involved with upkeep. Two, it allows you to mark responsibility and easily assign tasks to different warehouse members. You can also instantly track progress.

Upkeep does not need to be difficult. With the top three quick tips, you can begin setting things in motion. Establish a consistent routine and stick with it. Focus on functionality, making sure every aspect of your warehouse is working at a high level. Finally, create a systemic checklist to stay organized and track responsibilities.

Our inventory management software can really help ease your frustrations and get your inventory where it needs to be. Contact us for more details and help on organizing your most precious business resource.

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What’s Needed and What’s Not: Three Smart Tips for Managing the Flow of Reports

How do You Design Your Warehouse Space for Maximum Efficiency?

Inventory software management is integral for disbursing orders and managing your inventory flow. But at the end of the day, sometimes good old fashioned organization is the best way to improve your efficiency.

Even the best system can be tripped up if your warehouse organization is messy. So how do you design your physical warehouse space for maximum efficiency? Below we cover six quick tips for how to get your warehouse space up to par.

1. Structure Around What You Do

Warehouse management is not universal, and there are very few approaches that can fully work for every business type without being extremely vague. You need to grasp what your business does on a daily basis and design around that intent. Are you doing light assembly on site? How about large product shifting requiring vehicular warehouse equipment? These are two big examples, but there are many that are much smaller but still provide a big impact. Create your surrounding warehouse space around what you do. If that means making huge changes, do it. It will be worth it.

2. Key Units and Size Metrics

Your key units are your largest (albeit still necessary) items. Key units could be product or they could be warehouse conveniences, like shelving or production workspaces. Regardless, key units should be positioned and labeled first because they take up enough space to dominate the warehouse.

3. Class Identification

Product is usually divided into three categories, though there are many ways to divide contents. A common division is Class A, B, and C, with A being top priority and high-selling products and C being excess stock and poor or seasonal sellers.

There are subcategories involved in this organization. For example, you may have light household items, heavy items (requiring bottom row placement), assembly required, overstock, raw materials, and more.

To organize the structure of your warehouse, consider product placement and importance. This approach will save you innumerable hours circling the warehouse and jumping around.

4. Organize with Equipment and Moving in Mind

Your product placement and positioning is important, of course. But what should take precedent over your product is your equipment. In other words, how you get around is often as or more important than where you put your product.

Obviously, the two often go hand in hand. But in designing your new warehouse, place a heavy emphasis on mobility and shifting. One big consideration is aisle width. If you can’t effectively get down the aisle with the right equipment, it does not matter what is housed down there- you aren’t getting to it. Prioritize workspace position, aisle length, and general mobility to maximize efficiency.

5. Labeling

Every area, regardless of importance, needs formal labeling. Even with small warehouses, you need a systematic method to organize your contents into logically-labeled subareas. Keep your system concise and easy to explain. Even if you only have a few products in the meantime, your organization method can scale up accordingly. Don’t be afraid to micro-label. For example, you can add a specific label for a side of the shelf (left or right).

Don’t hesitate to utilize overhead storage and maximize the shelf space you do have.

6. Apply Shelf Breathing Room

Account for breathing room. This includes extra spacing shelves for unexpected reorders or just general openeness as you navigate tight aisles. The moment you start bleeding product into the wrong area or putting product on the floor, you open up an organizational can of worms you may have a hard time getting out of.

Apply software management software to make any warehouse strategy more efficienct. Contact us today for more details.

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What’s Needed and What’s Not: Three Smart Tips for Managing the Flow of Reports

How Discrete Ordering is Often the Main Pick and Pack Process for Cleaning Up Your Inventory Flow

With good software inventory management reporting, you are often left with a conundrum. Do you use the data or do you push it aside? Do you actively respond to it on a monthly basis or do you file it away for later?

A difficult challenge in managing your software is not always in the mechanics. You can figure out many tasks involved with selling, tracking, and storing. The serious long-term challenge comes from the reports. You are offered many different ones, but not all of them will be immediately useful for your business. You need to review the reports which are imperative to your business flow and which reports are just noise.

We know that information is power and reports can help you make informed decisions. But sometimes it is just too much. There is only so much time in a day. So what is imperative and what really is extra information? We offer three quick tips for determining how to apply the reports of inventory software.

Organize by Three Tiers

It may be helpful to divide all your reports by three distinct categories. These can generally be broken down into:

• What information is invaluable?
• What information is helpful but not vital for day-to-day-operations?
• What information is non-important?

You may find that all information is key in one way or another. But this can help isolate certain areas that are not directly helping your business. It also helps priorities the right tools for your business. Apply the tools that most easily provide these reports.

Apply the Tools You Most Immediately Understand

DEAR Systems tools are designed to help in multiple different areas of data reporting. When you apply a new inventory management system, you may be a bit overwhelmed. We suggest you focus in on a few areas. You can prioritize this by applying tools and resources you have a better grasp of. Not only will this reduce any learning curve, but you can begin to decipher and react to the information provided right away. There is no long process of explaining and understanding the data. More importantly, you need to know how to respond to it. If the numbers are no good, what do you do? How will your actions impact the data and improve the situation?

Make decisions based on the data. You can review inventory turnover rate, sales volume by product, current sitting stock, and a whole lot more. Our tools help you find these numbers. But you don’t want to always jump headfirst into an area that is either non-conducive to your business success or simply hard to respond to. Ease into more complex tools.

 If you want to expand your scope faster, we suggest our next leading strategy for report data management.

Hire Experts to Review Specific Reports

All information is helpful to some agree. We certainly aren’t saying that some data reports are pointless. But, their importance varies based on your business structure. What you can do to help apply all the data as needed is to hire team members specifically for reviewing each area. For example, a team can monitor profit margins specifically by reviewing this specific part of data reporting.

Kickstart your business strategy with DEAR Systems inventory management. You can help get the right reports to the right places, and create logical strategies for future growth. You can review your inventory at any time, add automated workflow funnels, and make proactive decisions based on extensive reporting. Harness the capabilities of our system to see gamechanging results.

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Applying the 80/20 Rule to Your Inventory Management

How Discrete Ordering is Often the Main Pick and Pack Process for Cleaning Up Your Inventory Flow

Streamlined inventory management is often hard to nail down, especially when your inventory is scattered, varied, and difficult to manage. While inventory management software can do a lot of the heavy lifting, it often takes a dedicated eye to apply hard and fast principles of inventory control.

This is where the 80/20 rule comes into play. When done right, it can be an invaluable framework of maximizing profitability and getting control over your inventory flow.

What is the 80/20 rule and how can you apply it starting right now?

The essence of the rule is rather simple. It means that 80{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} of your profits derive from about 20{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} of your inventory.

On paper, this can seem a little precarious. You don’t necessarily want this to be a lot higher because you end up relying on very specific products. But when you scan out, you realize that it actually makes a lot of sense. Your top sellers will come to define the business. They will keep you progressing even in tougher seasons. It is also natural that certain items will elevate to the top. You won’t see McDonald’s complaining that 80{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} of their profits come from cheeseburgers only and many more specified and narrow companies may be happy to derive 80{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} of their profits from a select few top-leading products.

Over time, this number is healthy and a natural evolution of business. You have certain products that are your breadwinners.

Priority

What does the 80/20 rule mean in your inventory management strategies?

The first area to look at is prioritization. Your top products are worth your extra attention because they bring in the vast majority of profits. With this in mind, they should be located in a very easy to reach area. They should be monitored actively and carefully.

In general, you can make active decisions regarding the inventory flow of your most valuable products. It can help you make informed decisions about where to place your time and money.

Splitting

The approach also leads you to divide your inventory into categories. This is often called the ABC Analysis. In short, it means dividing your products into category A, B, or C.

• Category A: most valuable (the top 20{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3})
  
• Category B: Mid-level valuable (around 60{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3})
• Category C: Least valuable (not moving- around 20{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3}- though as low as possible is best)

The above is a very average breakdown of product categorization.

By splitting the products, you can understand the importance of them and their place in the larger picture of your business.

Suppliers

Who is responsible for supplying the products you rely on?

The supply chain plays a key role in managing your inventory. You rely on suppliers to get products you need, whether in the form of a final product or raw materials. You do not want to be at the mercy of the ebb and flow of their supply. While some insufficient supplies are unavoidable, you could make informed adjustments based on the 80/20 rule.

Perhaps you have arrangements for the mid and low-tier performing products. You can apply the 80/20 rule to your business. Do you need a separate supplier for many of your mid-performing products or can they be wrapped up into the top performers?

You can specifically look at their reliability. If an unreliable supplier is responsible for a big part of your top 20{cb377218d5687e54e8ee9149518f87201a393a7c1db5e8076e9d750029ec0dc3} products, their lack of performance will have a greater impact on your bottom line compared to a supplier who provides you with your mid-level products.

Ultimately, it’s important to know what your big moneymakers are. This breakdown can help isolate trouble spots and allow you the room to hone in on areas of relevance and make practical decisions based around your top fifth inventory.

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How Discrete Ordering is Often the Main Pick and Pack Process for Cleaning Up Your Inventory Flow

DEAR Warehouse Management Gets Better by Getting a Voice (Coming Soon)