Stock outs are always a bummer and a pain to deal with.
When a customer requests an item and gets told it is out of stock, it leads to customers dissatisfaction as well as a loss of confidence in the business.
However, stockouts still happen constantly in the retail industry even though they are extremely preventable.
This is because there is no proper monitoring and tracking of inventory.
However with technology like a modern Point of Sale (POS) System, this problem can be easily averted.
EPOS is one of Singapore’s leading POS vendors ,known for our Inventory Management System.
Here is how our POS System can help you prevent stock out situations as well as other ways that you can implement to prevent stock out on your own.
Inventory Management And Tracking Of Data
Managing your inventory can be difficult, and ensuring that your data is up to date is a tedious and time consuming task.
From product returns and exchanges to possible internal theft or misplaced items, ensuring your stocks tally on paper with the situation in store can be challenging.
Changing to a proper inventory management system will enable you to modify inventory levels across multiple outlets and manage them from one platform.
Cloud Based POS also provides the option of remote access through any web browser, this lets you view your stock count at any time of the day.
By having an accurate and up to date inventory tally, you are able to easily see when a stock is reaching its low level.
Alternatively you can set a “reorder point” which is essentially the point when a stock hits a certain quantity, the stock will be highlighted to you as a reminder to reorder.
As such, investing in proper inventory management is essential in minimizing stockout and ensuring that your customers get what they want.
At EPOS we take it a step further with Order Express.
Order Express is a program that was jointly developed with A*STAR which integrates machine learning to help predict your stock demand.
Order Express analyse and predict your stocks based on your current trends, providing you with assurance based on data and not intuition.
Our system will generate a report based on your sales and inventory data.
It is easy to understand and navigate through.
You can filter results based on Sales Data, Stock Status, or Duration, making it highly customized to the metrics you desire.
Our report can also analyze past sales and predict sales for the next time period with a confidence interval of 95%, generating a recommendation for how much to order.
The recommendation also takes into account the lead times of the items.
From the Order Express , you are able to immediately create and send a purchase order based on the suggested quantities.
Alternatively, users can choose to send a system-generated email at their desire.
These features can easily help you prevent stockout situations and allow you to be adaptable to any situation.
Educating Your People And Predicting Trends
While modern POS Systems can help you keep track and input data, it is your own responsibility to utilize the data to make future stock trends and accommodate for them.
You can look back at your consumer data and detect trends in customer purchasing patterns to forecast demand for certain products in the future.
For example, during the period where festive events may occur such as Chinese New Year, supermarkets and mini marts can stock up on extra beverages and frozen foods that are known to have a surge in demand based on trends and data.
A clothing retailer could also look into having more red incorporated into their designs nearing National Day.
By looking at your data and forecasting demand, you will be able to minimize situations where demand surges drastically and you are unable to capitalize on it.
Investing in your people can also serve various benefits.
Training your staff on how to input data and how to interpret it can help ensure stocks are filled.
For example, empty shelves that are not replenished are assumed to be out of stock, even if there is sufficient stock out back.
Creating a process and system of how data is inputted and when to replenish can ensure efficiency in your inventory management and that your staff understand the process to implement smoothly.
As such, using a implementing a proper inventory management system together with conducting your own personal checks can be extremely beneficial in ensuring your stockout situations are minimized.
