What's the big deal with cloud inventory?

Automating inventory will change the way you do things

In our last blog post, we talked about how automating and streamlining your accounting processes can help you grow your business more efficiently. 

The above is especially true for e-commerce sellers. 

As an e-commerce seller, your business is in the cloud. That being said, all of your data should also be in the cloud.

More importantly, your inventory should be tracked in the cloud and streamlined with your main business processes. If you only have a handful of SKUs and selling on only one channel, excel is sufficient. But what happens when you start selling more? What if you're selling in multiple channels? 

Using excel, you would have to manually update quantities in every shopping cart and platform. And then there's always the danger that you forget to update and end up having to tell a customer that the item is out of stock. You just lost a sale!

Inventory management is core to growing your business. Having the right cloud inventory system helps manage cash flow and allows you to accurately determine profitability by SKU and by channel. It can also tell you how fast inventory is moving.

Of course, excel can do this too, but having cloud inventory is more efficient. And as you grow, managing inventory in excel will become more time consuming and cumbersome.

There are a lot of cloud inventory solutions in the marketplace. Which solution should you choose? As with everything in business, it depends.

Here are some of the critical questions to ask1:

·        Does it have all the core and optional features you need (eg, multi-channel, drop ship, point of sale)?

·        Does it integrate with your marketplaces and shopping carts?

·        Does the investment make sense for your budget?

·        Do they support your target market, eg, do they have other customers in your space, whether that’s apparel, food products, light manufacturing, general products or something else?

·        When you contact the provider are they responsive?

·        Do they support your timezone? There are some great products internationally but not all have support hours that match your work.

1https://www.xero.com/blog/2015/05/selecting-a-cloud-inventory-solution-for-an-ecommerce-business/