Tip Three - Smarter Stock Control

Get Your Blood Pumping

If cash flow is the oxygen that helps you grow, then let’s think of stock as the blood, pumping in and out at the heart of your company.
Of course, the wrong level of oxygen in your blood can make you unwell. Just as too little cash invested in your stock leads to delayed orders and unhappy customers. And too much money tied up in ‘dead’ stock can severely hamper your cash flow.
Managing a large inventory is always a challenge, but during a recession, getting it wrong could prove fatal. So this week, we’re focusing on ways to make your stock work harder, and get this ’blood’ pumping better through your business. 

• Take stock
  Ask yourself if your current stock level is too high, just right or too low. Complete a comprehensive stock-take as a very first step.
• Time for a spring clean
  If your stock levels of any items are too high, think about offering discounts for volume purchases or running a sales promotion to convert it back to cash. Or maybe your suppliers would accept a return or exchange?
• Visit Mr Pareto again
  Of course, your most expensive stock items are not necessarily your most profitable. So it’s time to check out the 80-20 rule again. Work out what’s selling and what’s not. If 80 percent of your revenues come from only 20 percent of your products, concentrating your efforts on those could make you instant savings.
• Seasons change
  It’s likely that everything you sell has at least one peak season during the course of the year. So find out what the variation is. You could track it by individual products, or by certain categories or departments. And then plan accordingly.
• Barter hard
  Could you make any savings by negotiating with your suppliers? Or would another supplier make you a better offer? Remember, it’s a recession for them too!

Have a proper look around
Visit your warehouse with critical eyes. Do you have small products stacked on large shelves or a multitude of products stored together? Is it quick and easy to get to your stock? Could you perhaps free up floor space for new income generation? For example, could you sub-let some of your wasted facilities? Or even rent a smaller warehouse to save some money?

Technology is making it easier to better manage your inventory. The right monitoring and reporting tools can now help you lower your inventory levels without losing sales.

Have you heard about the Sage 200 Suite? It has all the elements you need to help your business work smarter, whatever the economic climate, including:

• Sage 200 Commercials: helps you manage your entire purchase and sales order processes. 
• Sage 200 Manufacturing: helps you control every stage of your manufacturing process from planning, materials and costs to tracking orders and collecting payment.

Sage 200 Wholesale and Retail: helps you control your whole retailing process from buying stock, booking it in across multiple locations and branches, marketing and selling it and reporting on business performance.

Yours positively

Ian Dally

The Quintech Smarter Business Team