5 Top Tips for Organising Stock for E-Commerce
One of the key services customers rely on an e-commerce business for is a seamless online ordering experience, with the growth of next day and same day deliveries, every second counts in the delivery process, inefficient and unorganised stock and lead to significant delays in getting shipments out the door.
From inaccurate inventory to delayed deliveries, there is a whole host of issues that could majorly scupper your operation, leading to customer dissatisfaction and lost profits.
Here at Allegro Logistics, we are experts in eCommerce fulfilment working with clients across the UK to provide seamless inventory management and logistics support. In this blog, we aim to help you avoid this by sharing our top tips on how you can boost the efficiency of your stock organisational process and how this can benefit your business.
How to Organise Your E-Commerce Stock Efficiently
We understand maintaining organised stock has its challenges. Here are our top 5 tips to help everything run smoothly:
Implement Barcode Management
Barcode management is essential for stock organisation. By assigning unique barcodes to each product, you can easily track and manage inventory levels.
Barcodes simplify the process of stock counting, stock replenishment and order fulfilment. It enables you to enter accurate data, reducing the risk of errors and saving valuable time.
Investing in a barcode scanning system can significantly enhance your stock management process. When a new shipment arrives, staff can scan the barcode of incoming products to update your inventory database automatically.
This allows for real-time stock visibility and prevents overselling or sold-out stock.
Group Products by Categories and Colours
An effective way to boost your picking, packing and shipping process is to organise your stock based on categories and colours. Grouping products that belong in the same category together allows easier navigation in your warehouse and quick access during order fulfilment. Similarly, arranging products by colour can help with inventory management.
Consider using colour-coded labels or storage areas to help differentiate between groups. This will help stock find the right products quickly and help to maintain accurate stock records, simplifying stocktaking and stock replenishment.
Optimise Packaging Planning
For an eCommerce business, making sure you have enough packaging materials for all the products you have in stock is crucial.
Without the right quantity of packaging materials, you could experience delays in shipping, damaged products and more importantly dissatisfied customers. Equally, excess packaging wastes valuable storage space and increases storage costs.
The answer to this is to regularly review your packaging requirements based on the specific dimensions of your products to determine the appropriate size and quantity for each item.
Adopt the First-In, First-Out Method
The first-in, first-out method is essential for managing perishable or time-sensitive products, such as food and beverages. By arranging your stock based on when you got it, you can prioritise selling the oldest inventory first to make sure that products do not expire.
To achieve this method successfully, you need to regularly conduct stock audits to identify products that are approaching their expiration dates or those that have been in storage for an extended period. Not only does this help to sell older stock and prevent waste, but it also works to reduce the chance of markdowns or write-offs due to expired goods.
Conduct Regular Stock Audits and Analysis
By regularly reviewing your inventory, you can gain valuable insights into stock performance to identify areas of improvement and make data-driven decisions.
For example, by analysing your stock data, you can identify slow-moving products and take actions to try to boost sales such as offering discounts, implementing a different marketing strategy or evening discontinuing products entirely.
This process also helps you to highlight sale patterns and predict when products might be in demand. Understanding which products sell more frequently or during certain seasons gives you the opportunity to adjust your restocking schedule.
What Are the Business Benefits of Efficient Stock Management?
Aside from giving you peace of mind, there are also multiple business benefits to having an organised stock management process.
Here are the three key benefits:
Cost Effectiveness
Organised stock management reduces costs by optimising packaging, preventing overstocking and minimising product waste or expiration.
Reduces Idle and Wasted stock
Stock organisation also minimises the risk of holding excess stock that can tie up capital and take up valuable storage space.
Quicker Turnaround time for Shipment
Having accurate inventory data and organised stock also enables you to process orders faster to ensure timely deliveries and boost customer satisfaction.
E-commerce Fulfilment Services from Allegro Logistics
While effective stock organisation is crucial for the success of an e-commerce business, managing the entire order fulfilment process in-house can be challenging and time-consuming.
That’s where Allegro Logistics come in.
From storage in our Bristol warehouse to picking, packing and shipping, we handle your entire fulfilment process so all you have to focus on is selling your products.
With over 60 years of experience, our clients rely on us for our expert services, including:
- Storage
- Domestic and international shipping
- Point-of-sale distribution
- Subscription box fulfilment
To find out more about how we can help transform your order fulfilment and shipping process, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team today.
