One of the most difficult challenges for small business owners is how to sell their products across multiple marketplaces and keep their inventory accurate at the same time. This is critical for every company since customers expect what they buy to be in stock and arrive in two days. Amazon has set the standard for consumers and business buyers now have the same expectation.

When I ran a software catalog company in the 1990’s, my biggest issue was always the confusion in the warehouse. This was a time when application software came on computer discs in product boxes so we had to physically stock the product! We had to know:

What inventory do we have?

This is critical since the customer wants to know when they will get it since they are not conditioned to wait.

What is the optimal fill rate we are targeting?

Keeping every product in stock may consume too much of the company’s cash so a 100 percent fill rate may not be practical.  You need to know what customers will accept without buying it somewhere else.

When do you need to reorder and how much?

The stock level that should be reordered varies based on the desired fill rate and how long it will take to get new inventory. How much to order depends on cash flow and quantity discounts that are available.

When was new inventory arriving for backorders?

Every business, like their customers, need to know where their shipment is at any point in the process.

Selling products are even more complicated today. Companies are selling not only on their own websites or in their own retail stores, but across third party marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Etsy. This means, for example, that when you sell a product on Amazon, it must be updated in your inventory across all channels. What is even more difficult is that order needs to be available to be tracked by the customer from shipment to reception.

As a small business, you need to have a system that will do the following things:

  • Track your inventory across many online channels and physical locations
  • Use an effective and flexible shopping cart for your online store
  • Have a seamless integration with shipping carriers and payment systems.
  • Be able to have comprehensive inventory analytics that will track stock, cash flow and taxes across all channels.

A solution that I recommend that can do this for every small business that has to manage their inventory is Zoho Inventory. This multi-channel system easily lets you set up and integrate your Amazon, eBay, Etsy, or Shopify accounts in minutes. You can check stock levels, manage inter-warehouse transfers, and generate reports for specific warehouses easily. You can track backorders and drop shipments in one single inventory management application. Zoho also facilitates real-time shipping rates and in-transit details of all major shipping carriers.

Don’t wait for customers to complain or things to get complicated. Try Zoho for free now.