A woman packing boxes in a warehouse

Best Practices for Inventory Management Efficiency in Fulfilment

Whether you’ve been in the game a little while or you’re new to the whole storage thing, efficient inventory management is crucial for streamlining your fulfilment operations. 

There are a host of benefits to be gained by adopting the right practices, including helping businesses to maximise the profitability of stock, reducing costs, avoiding unnecessary disruptions in the supply chain and ensuring overall customer satisfaction. 

We’re sharing our top tips and tools to help you effectively track every item in your warehouse with ease.

  • Implement Inventory Tracking Systems

As self-explanatory as it sounds, ensuring you have the correct tools in place will be the difference between an organised warehouse and a disorganised one. Using real-time inventory management software helps to monitor stock levels accurately. 

At InterSend, our warehouse is powered by the industry-leading management system, Mintsoft. This cloud-hosted system is purposely designed for multi-sector requirements providing a single, powerful solution to manage your stock operation.

  • Maintain Accurate Forecasting

Forecasting is the process of planning and predicting the right volume of inventory you need to avoid over or under-stocking your warehouse; and it’s an important tick-box exercise when it comes to maintaining organisation within your warehouse. 

To successfully forecast, you’ll need to analyse historical sales data, customer behaviour and seasonal trends. In doing so, you must also account for seasonal fluctuations, promotions, and market shifts – at certain times of the year order volumes may peak therefore you’ll need higher stock levels to cope, while you’re sure to experience quieter periods too.

​​Due to the flexibility of our operation, we can easily increase or reduce your dedicated pick-face areas; your storage is optimised for fast pick, pack and despatch, but you pay reduced overall storage costs for items that don’t need that level of rapidly accessible, dedicated space. 

This has become a very popular feature of our service, especially with clients selling seasonal goods, helping to optimise fulfilment during peak times and reducing storage costs during quieter periods.

  • Optimise Warehouse Layout

How your warehouse is laid out can have a huge impact on how well you can manage your inventory – and we’re not just talking about the feng shui of the place. Having a tidy warehouse and clearly marked locations are the basics (as the famous saying goes, “tidy house, tidy mind”) but you can take this one step further by optimising your inventory.

Place high-demand items in easily accessible locations (ideally closest to packing stations) and try implementing vertical storage systems to maximise space and improve efficiency. 

At InterSend, our warehouse is laid out to deliver maximum operational efficiency, which facilitates seamless product tracking, streamlined organisation, and a faster, more effective pack and pack process. Small, fast-moving items are placed into pick-face storage, ready for speedy picking, packing and delivery. Because we measure the size of items during goods in, we can calculate the exact space your inventory takes up and charge you only for that pack-face storage space accordingly. It’s a win, win.

  • Adopt Inventory Practices Like Just-In-Time (JIT)

Businesses can choose from various inventory control methods to optimise stock movement while simultaneously minimising waste and reducing cost. For those aiming to hold minimal stock, the Just-In-Time (JIT) method is ideal. 

This approach reduces excess stock by replenishing goods based on immediate demand, aligning orders directly with sales activity – and taking ownership of the task, so you don’t have to!

For us, our dynamic Warehouse Management System handles this task effortlessly. The system integrates seamlessly with most leading eCommerce platforms, managing orders and updating stock levels. This ensures complete inventory visibility and provides the data needed to adjust numbers and efficiently manage the workload.

  • Conduct Regular Audits

Another basic, yet important management best practice is to perform routine stock checks and regular audits to ensure records match physical inventory. 

This is a straightforward process that can help address any discrepancies you may have missed during your daily checks, promptly, maintaining accuracy within your stock. We carry out this non-negotiable process internally via Mintsoft.

  • Enhance Supplier Relationships

Working closely with suppliers can help you to improve lead times, reliability, and keep operations running smoothly. Keeping open communication also gives both parties the opportunity to share data, enabling faster replenishment of critical stock.

You guessed it. Our highly experienced team works closely with you from the start to tailor a bespoke fulfilment programme that suits your brand, customers, and product. Think of us as your one-stop, reliable, fulfilment and logistics partner – an extension of your team.

  • Prioritise Returns Management

At InterSend, we offer a rapid, traceable, and fully integrated returns management system designed to streamline all aspects of reverse logistics. This includes gone-away processing, returning stock to storage with accurate inventory updates, or securely destroying and recycling items when needed.

By prioritising efficient returns management, we implement clear policies and systems to protect your brand’s reputation and maintain customer trust. The ability to inspect and restock returned items quickly ensures a smooth inventory flow – an essential process that’s just as crucial as the initial dispatch of goods.

The importance of rapid returns management is paramount. At InterSend, we process returned stock exceptionally carefully; all items are identified, assigned to a customer or account, assigned a disposition and then physically sorted for processing. Damaged goods are quarantined and clearly recorded for you. Where needed, stock with damaged outer packaging can be repackaged before being added safely back to your stock for resale.

 

Efficient inventory management is the backbone of a successful fulfilment strategy. By implementing these best practices, businesses can enhance operational performance, meet customer expectations, and remain competitive in today’s fast-paced marketplace.

For more information on how we manage our warehouse inventory, browse our eCommerce Fulfilment page

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