Boosting performance on marketplaces thanks to controlled stock management

Marketplaces are extremely popular: the Amazon platform on its own registers over two million individual visitors every day. Quite naturally, you want to make the most of that. Yet to ensure good performance levels within these virtual markets, you need to be able to count on concrete - and perfectly controlled - stock levels. This is where the notion of inventory management comes into play.

Inventory management implies monitoring the supply chain - from manufacturers to warehouses and then from warehouses to points of sale/consumers. One of the key functions in inventory management is the precise recording of all items going in and out: products arriving in the warehouse, products departing from the warehouse and products returned by recipients.

This form of controlled stock management should be at the very heart of your e-commerce activity. If you sell products on marketplaces, you must make sure you supply your customers within the stated deadline. Moreover, if you are present on a large number of marketplaces, online shops must absolutely be synchronised with your physical stock levels, so you can meet your customers’ requests without risking stock outages or warehouse congestion. For beginners, a simple Excel spreadsheet is enough for keeping track of your monthly inventory management. However, with that system, large organisations may soon be overwhelmed - especially during rush periods.

Benefits of inventory management solutions

As such, an inventory management solution helps better control stock levels and provides e-commerce holders with essential tools for improving their performance levels on marketplaces. This type of solution provides an overall (and continuous) vision of all stock movements: orders made to suppliers, product entries, orders placed by customers, product dispatches, deliveries and potential returns.

Inventory management means:

• less stock held by the company, so fewer supply chain expenses;
• no stock outages, so high turnover and more satisfied customers;
• on-time deliveries;
• better controlled stock rotation;
• less unused stock at the end of the year.

In a nutshell, good stock management ensured thanks to an inventory management solution also means higher performance levels on marketplaces.