Strategies to Optimize Stock Availability in the eCommerce Industry - EtrakyBS

In eCommerce, sales occur rapidly, changing the stock level now and then. Online retailers have to maintain an adequate balance of stock and keep a smooth operation of selling in multichannel. In online platforms, the conversion rate is impressively more than the physical stores. Customers place bulk orders that may have nearby delivery dates in different locations. After that, it becomes difficult for online sellers to keep a suitable stock availability in their warehouses. Technically, sellers can't keep an errorless stock report that could help plan future insights with a manual method. Although brands too have some duties and responsibilities to look after their sellers for improving their selling efficiency. In this regard, we are going to learn some informative techniques that can be used to plan stock optimization with its audits and back-office support system. 

Types of Audits to Optimize Stock Level

• Setting up Par-Level

This method is used to fix every product's minimum level of stocks for each eCommerce channel. This is adopted to never face out-stocking anytime and creating seamless operational benefits. This is highly used for stocks that need to have long-term expiry dates. This includes food, beverages, cosmetics, etc., that needs to be monitored and managed until it is safe for use. Through this, sellers need not worry about the level of stocks because they would be aware of the minimum stocks available in the stockroom. A certain amount of stock ensures fulfillment efficiency where no deals are canceled and eliminates stock wastage.

• First In-First Out

This process of optimizing stock focuses on selling out the old stocks first then the fresh stocks. This designed stock management is used to clean the previous stock to keep fresh stock reports only. Sellers consider such stock operations that have been brought in the warehouse and are yet not sold until the time it can achieve sales. Afterward, the fresh stocks are taken into accountability. Before this, no stock movement of new stocks takes place. This mechanism also includes the reselling of old products till it gets sold. You may use the knitting technique to clear out your old stocks; for example, Buy 2 get 1 free!

• ABC Management 

This audit method is done by segregating stocks into three different categories. Category A is more valued inventories with less demand, Category B has moderate values with moderate conversion rate, and Category C has the lowest value with the highest sales. This manner of stock audits helps the seller focus on their premium products to dedicate their time to strategizing such stock management. And for adequate profitability, sellers must first focus on combining Category B with any of the rest categories for better organizational growth. 

Strategies for Building Strong Stock Availability

• Acknowledge Your Product Demand

Before you can plan anything for organizing your stocks, you first research the market and understand the demand level of your stocks. It gives you an idea regarding your customer's interest and reliability, rivals' product demand, and the market environment compared to your conversion rate. It helps sellers to choose the best pathway for their stock allocation. It also dismisses sellers to face high logistics costs and warehouse management duties. You would be aware of your center of attention where you have the highest or lowest conversion rate to plan accordingly. 

• Learn Your Star Product

When you go through market research, a lot of knowledge and information is grabbed from social media, eCommerce multichannel marketplaces, customer sentiments, rival studies, etc. It lets you know your most attractive point, which means your popular product. This product has the highest conversion rate with efficient marketing techniques and cost. Try to maintain this sales rate throughout the session by optimizing that star-product. It means your center focus should lie in ensuring that particular product in every given warehouse and channel to streamline your business operations followed by other stock management.

• Build Safety-Stock

Safety stocks or Buffer Stock is nothing but that balance of stocks that are kept for future uncertainties. The eCommerce industry is full of fluctuations and dynamic market nature. It is not necessary that your planning will always help you safeguard your sales. At times, you may have higher conversion opportunities that require stock availability. It also does not encourage you to overload your stockroom or vice versa. These buffer stocks are a big support for online sellers operating in omni channels.

• Predict Your Stock Requirements 

When you know your current product performance and how your customer is responding to your product listing, it gets a little easier to speculate your upcoming demands. It is not sure that you will always have a particular way of operations for a specified product. Knowingly, one seller could deal in several brands' products. Let's say you are dealing with Product X and Product Y, where X has more sales than Y, so you procure more X products. But what if you face a loss in the same and end up selling Product Y eventually but lack stock availability. That is why to be ready with what the market is looking forward to and plan your inventory allocation. 

How to Ensure Accuracy and Transparency in Stock Strategizing?

The best way to dig out the professional and robust stock availability monitoring with track reports is by implementing Stock Availability Analytics Software. It is a cloud-based solution where stock is tracked. Data is recorded under the umbrellas of stock availability, stock fill rates, live stocks in multichannel, out-stocking, back-in stocks, product performance, etc. This helps brands understand the real potential of their business and monitor their sellers to perform towards bringing higher sales responsibly. 

Along with this, the brand tracking tool also facilitates effortless market research and actions against sellers who do not maintain a suitable inventory level as per the demand. It covers the brands from future losses by sending instant alerts and assisting their marketing strategies through foolproof analytics. Incredibly, you could make speculations after making a comprehensive and comparative analysis of historical and current sales behaviors on multichannel. 

Conclusion

The stock management method is not an easy task due to the eCommerce non-transparent mechanism of eCommerce. It can expect you to fulfill demands anytime or lose on high conversions and customer experience. Being a vast marketplace, it offers large-scale operations not just for you but for rivals as well. That means you need to be ready to grab the largest you can come up with compelling stock insights to cherish your customers' standardized and all-time stock availability experience.