Benefits of Inventory Planning Basics

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Inventory PlanningAny organization, which engages itself in producing, selling, and trading of products, must have a huge stack of inventory forms. For example, organizations dealing in manufacturing and production may hold inventory of raw materials, spare parts, and finished goods. Trading companies, on the other hand, may have inventories of finished products with respect to the model that the business assumes. Evidently, all sectors in an organization ought to have their inventory applications concerning the products that they are producing, selling, or even buying.

What then is Inventory Planning? Inventory planning refers to the process that any organization adopts to determine the optimal quantity as well as timing, with the sole aim of aligning such plans with the organization’s capacity to produce and make sales. Inventory planning usually affects the company in a number of ways. For example, it directly determines the cash flow of any organization and its profit margins with reference to those that have an over-reliance on fast turnovers of materials and goods. Evidently, inventory planning is an important aspect of any business’s success.

Perhaps you might be wondering whether adopting inventory planning and control in your business will benefit you in any way. Of course, it will. There are several advantages associated with inventory planning since this function comes from the inventory management department. It is important for business owners and managers to consider a robust inventory planning since it creates business forecasts that ensure the business ascertains how much it should produce and supply to customers in order to meet the market demand. Outlined below are a number of the advantages of having an effective inventory planning system within a business.

Better Cash Flow

Business owners often devise internal policies and procedures that will ensure better planning and control of production and sales. Such strategies are binding to everyone in the organization, including managers. Usually, these policies help the company to order, maintain inventory flow, account for inventory values, as well as help them on how to handle obsolete goods. All these processes are designed to achieve organizational goals and objectives. By implementing such strategies in inventory planning, the company can manage its cash flow well.

For small-scale businesses, their scale of operations does not allow them to run copious amounts of inventory. However, in certain situations, the size of a business does not matter since it is the role of any manager to set up policies and procedures that will help govern inventory spending. In order to improve an organization’s cash flow, the management ought to invest in the most effective and practical inventory system within the business environment. For this reason, the company is able to save itself a lot of money. In addition, better inventory planning helps the company to establish a cost advantage for itself with respect to the economic market situations. Evidently, with better strategies in place, any given organization can use inventory planning and control to improve its cash flow. Better cash flow allows the organization to achieve its organizational and business goals.

Higher Profits

Inventory planning in any business can act as a bridge to higher profits. Through the control of inventory, a business is able to increase its profitability. However, such a scenario is only possible with better inventory planning. For example, the methods implemented by any organization when it comes to sourcing, as well as managing its inventory directly, will affect its expected profits. If a company ignores the need for a proper inventory system in its production, sales, and trade, it is likely to hinder them from maximizing its operational efficiency.

As such, an inventory’s cost of production and purchase has a significant effect on gross profit. With a decreased cost of production, a company increases its gross profit. For this reason, if proper inventory planning is maintained in a company, such that all its accounts are equal, the company will record bigger gross profits, which in effect, leads to higher profits. Proper inventory planning involves the purchase, production, and sale of goods that are within the demand of the customer. If an organization or company supplies the demanded products, it will realize high business profits.

Prevents Stealing

Inventory planning allows an organization to employ better strategies of controlling goods right from production until they are sold to the final consumer. The procedure and policies adopted in inventory planning and control are thus a better way of deterring employees from abusing inventory. Usually, employees in a work environment that is loose tend to steal inventory items. When employees steal items from the business, the business is likely to make a loss.

However, if the right inventory policies and procedures are installed, such cases cannot happen, and hence the company continues to make profits. Usually, in inventory planning, businesses adopt some of the latest technologies currently available in managing the inventory. The adopted technology involves accounting and business software that has the ability to order, receive, manage, as well as sell any inventory. With such software in place, it is hard for employees to steal any products, and hence all produced, manufactured, or traded inventory will reach the final consumer. This means that the company won’t have to incur any further losses.

From the information provided above, it is evident that inventory planning is a very significant aspect of any business. As such, business owners and top-level management ought to implement the right inventory planning and control strategies if they are to gain better cash flow, higher profits as well as reduce issues of inventory shrinkages. These three benefits are interrelated. Reduction and elimination of stock shrinkage translate to an increase in gross profits since the company is able to meet the demand in the market for its products. When it does this, the result is a high rate of return on invested capital and hence better cash flow. Better cash flow affords any organization higher profits, which helps the business to increase its scale of operation. This additional capacity means that the business and can achieve its set goals and objectives. As such, it is important to point out that better inventory planning and control is the key to a company’s achievement of its goals and objectives.

If you are currently running Intacct or Quickbooks and would like to schedule a free consultation to see if QStock is right for you as your next potential Warehouse management system, Contact Us Today by filling in the form below. We would love to hear about your business and how QStock can help you achieve your business goals.

Justin Velthoen

Justin Velthoen

Justin Velthoen has 20 years of supply chain experience, from food distribution to manufacturing, to systems management and implementation. His primary focus is helping businesses realize the cost savings directly to their bottom line.

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