Multi-Channel E-Commerce Inventory Management Tips

Many retailers today rely on multichannel sales to maintain their businesses. Working on multiple channels provides an excellent way to reach a larger market and drive sales and revenue. However, with multiple sales platforms come many management challenges. In particular, how are you meant to keep track of your inventory when you sell your products at multiple locations? Effective multi-channel e-commerce inventory management is necessary to ensure that your stock levels are updated in real time across all your e-commerce platforms. 

A poorly executed multichannel inventory management system can actually lead to the issues you are trying to avoid, such as stockouts and overselling. All of these can harm your business’s image and have a deleterious effect on your sales.

Among its other functions, Access2Pay integrates seamlessly with e-commerce platforms and provides efficient inventory management. 

In this article, we will examine the functions, benefits and challenges of multichannel e-commerce inventory management systems.

Multichannel inventory management is the system and process of tracking inventory sold across multiple sales platforms. These inventory management systems sync your stock levels across all your sales outlets, creating an accurate, centralized source of inventory information, updated in real time. Retailers who sell on multiple e-commerce platforms (or brick-and-mortar stores, for that matter) cannot afford to be without multichannel inventory management tools. They ensure that businesses can maintain firm control over their stock at all times, reduce stock loss and boost profitability.

Inventory management offers a range of benefits:

If you are selling the same items across multiple platforms, there is always the risk that your inventory numbers could get out of date. What if you have a limited number of units of a particular product in stock – say, just one unit? Imagine two customers came along on different platforms and ordered the same item. One of them gets there first and places the order. Then, before you have a chance to update your inventory, the other customer places their order for the same item on another website. Since your inventory is not automatically updated, the second customer’s order is allowed to go through checkout because it appeared as if you still had the item in stock. Multichannel inventory management prevents this kind of confusion from occurring.

The scenario outlined above can lead to some unhappy customers. The second customer places their order and pays, thinking that the matter is settled – only to find that you actually don’t have the item they wanted, and they will need to get a refund and look elsewhere. You are not likely to see that customer again. With multichannel inventory management, you prevent inventory mix-ups, and thus also ensure that all your customers get what they want and are kept happy.

With multichannel inventory management, you can use analytical tools to gain valuable insights into how your business functions. You can analyze past sales data to understand your customers’ preferences and understand which items sell most effectively on which platforms. You can optimize your stock levels and distribute your stock across your platforms for maximum efficiency and customer satisfaction.

By allowing you to optimize your stock levels, multichannel inventory management systems help you reduce your costs and prevent unnecessary spending. You will waste less money on dead stock and processing refunds for unfulfillable orders. You can also save money on shipping as you can arrange to ship an item from the fulfilment location closest to the customer.

Multichannel inventory management systems are built for scalability. When you work with one of these systems, you can easily add new sales locations and platforms, and incorporate them into your management system. The system will have no problem expanding its purview from two locations to three, four, or more. 

As you start working with your inventory management system, you may come across one or more of the following challenges. However, as you become more familiar with the system, you should have no problem overcoming them. Let’s consider each of the most common challenges you may encounter.

The foremost challenge you will encounter is ensuring that your inventory numbers are consistently synced across all your sales channels. Since e-commerce channels operate on different platforms with varying data structures and APIs, your system may encounter barriers to real-time data sharing. This can lead to the kind of overselling and other inaccuracies that you are trying to avoid. It is, therefore, important to pay close attention to ensuring compatibility between your management system and your sales platforms.

Setting up and operating a multichannel inventory management system requires a few essential practices, including automation and stock maintenance.

The most important element of successful multichannel inventory management is the capacity for automatic stock updates. Your system must include software that automatically updates stock levels across all your sales channels as soon as sales are made, ensuring that stock numbers are correct across all channels, and preventing overselling and stockouts.

One important thing to keep in mind, regardless of what system you use, is stock keeping units (SKU). Each product must have a unique SKU if you want to ensure accurate stock management.

Using sales data, you can analyze your market and predict future demand. You can use this information to inform your inventory purchases in future and set safety stock levels to ensure that you always have the correct quantities in your inventory.

As with every aspect of cloud-based computing, integration is the key to successful inventory management in the e-commerce sector. In order for automated stock management and maintenance to be possible, inventory management must be completely, seamlessly integrated with whatever e-commerce systems you use. It is only through integration that efficient operations can be achieved through automated stock tracking and order processing. Integration is also responsible for streamlined order management, improved customer experience and reduced costs.

Accuracy and efficiency ultimately lead to enhanced order fulfillment and customer satisfaction. With an integrated multichannel inventory management system, you have a centralized system for inventory control across all sales channels. In this way, you can streamline your operations, prevent overselling and ultimately improve your customer experience.

It is important to choose the right software that will integrate with your e-commerce platforms of choice. Software such as Cin7, Veeqo or Zoho Inventory are often used for this purpose. However, Access2Pay is a fully customizable POS system that includes integrated inventory management. It is capable of integrating thoroughly with all the most popular e-commerce platforms. Once you have selected the option that is best suited to your business, either set up the software as per the vendor’s instructions, or have the vendor carry out the implementation for you. Once the software is implemented, it will need to be tested and then optimized to ensure full integration with your e-commerce platforms.

Access2Pay is a cloud-based POS solution suited to a wide variety of businesses. We provide comprehensive retail POS services to help our clients run their businesses efficiently and profitably. Our cloud-based software integrates with all e-commerce platforms, as well as accounting software and other tools you may need to run your business. With our multichannel e-commerce inventory management system, you can efficiently track and manage your inventory in real time, monitor stock levels, automate replenishment, and streamline order processes. Contact us for more information about our system and its benefits.