The inventory management software and processes you choose do far more than just account for the items you have on hand and what you’re selling to customers. The right inventory management software helps you run a more profitable business.

If you’re considering a new inventory management system, there are a few essential factors you can’t afford to miss. 

What Sets SkuVault Apart from Other Inventory Management Software

When comparing inventory management system software, there can be significant differences. SkuVault’s eCommerce Inventory Management System (IMS) connects all your sales channels into a single interface, helps you organize your warehouse, and manage inventory efficiently with simple workflows. 

Seamless Integration with eCommerce Sales Platforms

Integrating with your systems is crucial to create an efficient workflow. You must choose a system that can integrate with the rest of your business operations. Multichannel sellers know first-hand how each channel operates a little differently and has unique requirements. Trying to manage each system independently can be difficult and lead to wasted time and expensive mistakes. 

SkuVault can integrate with existing systems to create a seamless experience. Popular eCommerce channels, such as Amazon, eBay, BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Channel Advisor, Square, and Walmart can be connected easily. 

Amazon FBA sellers, for example, are using eCommerce inventory management software like SkuVault for better visibility into their Amazon shipment activity. It also helps you easily manage your multichannel inventory and warehouse operations in a way that that fits Amazon standards. This helps fulfill orders more promptly while reducing errors and lowering your operating costs.

Every time you add a new channel, you need to learn how that platform works and what types of sales and customers you can expect. You also need to ensure that your sales listings are in the correct format and that the pricing and inventory counts are correct.

Errors here can be costly; you could end up committing to selling items for far less than the regular selling price, simply by misplacing a decimal point or putting a figure in the wrong column.

You also need to understand how the new channel works with inventory. If you can’t connect it seamlessly with your inventory management program, you may end up with shortfalls or missing out on sales. If you accidentally list fewer items than you have in stock, you risk losing sales. If you list more items than you have, you could end up with unhappy customers and cancellations – because you can’t fulfill orders. 

If you are not tracking all channels effectively, you could end up with fulfillment problems. When you have a true multi channel solution, you track not only your inventory, but the listings you have on multiple sites, and the sales you make. Tracking all three of these important metrics ensures you don’t oversell or undersell an item. 

Other channels can be added using an open API. This allows you to get up and running (and scale) quickly and efficiently. You can check out our list of popular integrations here. If there’s an integration you need that we don’t currently have, we’re always open to building it in where there is demand. 

Seamless Integration with Existing Business Systems

You’ll be able to integrate with more than just marketplaces when you use SKUVault. Our solutions are designed to integrate with your business software as well. When you can track all aspects of your inventory from a single platform and place, you are in control of your business and your brand, and you can avoid some of the most common stumbling blocks businesses face as they grow. 

For example, SkuVault easily integrates with programs like Quickbooks and makes it easy to generate purchase orders. When you can combine the powerful inventory management aspects of SkuVault with the robust and specialized accounting tools of Quickbooks, you end up with important insights that help you grow your business. SkuVault and Quickbooks can:

• Sync purchase orders
  Create purchase orders with full synchronization and with automatically added supplier, vendor, and other details. This ensures your orders are correct and tracked from the start, making it easy to get the supplies and products you need. 
• Sync item receipts
  You’ll be better able to track your purchases. Automatic sync makes it easy to follow your inventory as it arrives and prevents you from having to make changes manually. 
• Sync sales and issue receipts
  Receipts are automatically generated once a sale is marked complete, saving your team time and money. 
• Sales orders sync
  Orders created using Quickbooks instead of a selling platform or your website easily integrate into your SkuVault system. Since Quickbook orders are often wholesale or bulk purchases, the sooner they impact your stated inventory, the better. Syncing these large orders automatically prevents inventory and fulfillment issues. 

That’s just one example of how SkuVault can integrate with your existing software to help manage your supply chain and business. Another example is how SkuVault integrates with most Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, such as Microsoft Dynamics or NetSuite ERP. Our integrations work bi-directionally. Purchase orders sync both ways from ERP software. This allows you to be flexible on where you want your Purchase Order processes to live. Order sync occurs every 10 minutes which keeps your inventory up to date on all platforms. Product information from your ERP software into SkuVault, so you can easily make inventory adjustments in one place. 

SkuVault integrations include:

• Marketplaces
• Accounting
• Channel Management
• Shipping Platforms
• eCommerce Platforms
• Point of Sales
• CRM
• Analytics
• Drop Shipping
• EDI
• ERP

SkuVault can also help you streamline processes while minimizing costs and slashing fulfillment times with our Warehouse Management System. This helps create efficient workflows and pick lists customized to your warehouse’s needs, or switch pick methods throughout the day if needed. SkuVault automates the tracking of goods from start to finish so you can focus more on your business. 

• Increased warehouse accuracy
• Increased pick efficiency
• Reduced inventory costs
• Reduce carbon footprint (less paper!)

Discover how SKUVault supports a full range of seamless integration of platforms. 

Built by eCommerce Sellers for eCommerce Sellers

SkuVault’s team members are inventory management and warehouse experts. Our IMS was built by eCommerce sellers for eCommerce sellers. We understand how everything must work together to create peak efficiency. 

There’s not much room for error in the digital selling space. Creating supply chain efficiency is crucial to maintaining margins. 

We’ve learned these lessons because we’ve lived in the eCommerce sales world ourselves. We’ve seen the changes in eCommerce and have perfected the inventory features and warehouse workflows you need to scale and stay successful. 

Using SkuVault as your hub for tracking inventory and guiding products through the entire process from supply to order to fulfillment, sellers can optimize their warehouse operations and maintain tight inventory control. 

Complete Inventory Tracking

Without the right inventory management system, it can be a constant battle to maintain accurate inventory counts. Mis-counted, lost, or misplaced inventory is bad for business and can decrease already tight margins. 

When you consider these two statistics, it drives this point home:

• As much as 80% of the average retailer’s cash is tied up in inventory
• The average seller has just 63% inventory accuracy

The average retailer doesn’t have a handle on the status of more than a third of the inventory at any one time, yet it’s tying up significant amounts of cash in that “misplaced” inventory. That’s cash that could be used for more pressing issues. 

SkuVault provides users with complete inventory visibility. It starts with accurate inventory counts from the time it enters the warehouse at scanning until it’s shipped via your shipping software – all quantities and locations are tracked in SkuVault. 

Your data is always visible across locations, warehouses, and selling channels. Inventory is tracked in one inventory management system with access to reports for both historical data and real-time data. This helps you make better purchasing decisions and reduces errors. 

By reducing segmented supply chains, you have better inventory visibility across channels. When you are selling on multiple platforms, juggling supply chains and inventory systems can lead to confusion. Using SkuVault, you can prevent out of stock or overstock. Your inventory management system can handle automatic reordering when stock hits preset levels. It can also prevent overstocking items using automated controls. 

It’s important to maintain the right amount of inventory. If you oversell your stock too often, it can disrupt relationships with customer and eCommerce platforms. Amazon considers over-selling or failing to fulfill orders on time a serious concern. Amazon has been known to drop suppliers that oversell too often. 

The Value of a Robust Inventory Management Software

SKUVault customers report 87% faster order fulfillment, 90% fewer out of stocks, and 83% fewer mis-ships. These are significant numbers that track right to your bottom line in hard costs to fix errors. It also means you are putting the right product in the customer’s hands more quickly. 

There are also other benefits, including reduced inventory carrying (and holding) costs, reduced inventory errors, reduced picking errors, and more efficient handling of online returns. 

Reduced Inventory Carrying Costs

Inventory carrying costs can change dramatically based on the IMS you use and how efficient it is. The top performers, according to the Open Standards Benchmarking Measures in Logistics report enjoy a significant advantage. The top companies performed 11% better than the average. For a company with revenues of $5 million, that 11% can save more than $500,000 in inventory carrying costs. 

Reduced Inventory Errors

By reducing manual entry and other human errors, your inventory management system will improve your efficiency. Even a small rate of stock loss that goes undetected by businesses can disrupt the inventory management and supply chain. When inventory is inaccurate, it can create out-of-stock situations that can hurt your business. The lost revenue as a result of out-of-stock situations can be greater than the stock losses themselves.

An increase in inventory accuracy by as little as 1% is significant. It leads to an increase in on-time order delivery by suppliers, faster “Dock to Stock” cycles, and improved delivery times for customers. It can also reduce additional holding cost expenses, such as rent or insurance for holding excess stock. 

Reduced Picking Errors

Mis-picks are frustrating for everyone. If caught before shipping, it can slow down the process and disrupt efficiency. If not caught, it can put the wrong product in the hands of customers. This leads to higher returns, restocks, and damaged goods. It can also hurt your reputation and can cost future sales from dissatisfied customers. 

One study, conducted by Honeywell, calculated the average cost of a single mis-pick to be $59. For the average distribution center, that creates $400,000 of costs from mis-picks annually. 

More Efficient Online Returns

SkuVault’s inventory management system solution can streamline your return process. 

We don’t have to tell you that products sold online have high return rates. The average retailer can report returns from online orders between 20 and 30%. In the U. S. alone, return deliveries will cost businesses more than half a trillion dollars this year. That doesn’t even include inventory losses or restocking fees. 

If your business isn’t handling returns efficiently, and tracking inventory properly, it can cause all sorts of problems. 

The best way to keep accurate and current accounts of your inventory is to use an end-to-end IMS that integrates with your POS system, warehousing, and delivery systems. This allows for greater accuracy and accountability while providing real-time records for review. 

An inefficient system is going to leave a lot of merchandise unsorted, uncounted, or creating inventory pileup. 

Better Data for Better Business Decisions

Tying all your retail software into a centralized IMS system gives you real-time insights into how your business is operating. It provides a high-level view of your business and a per-item view of your stock. 

By tracking sales, quantities on hand, and warehouse activities, you can improve inventory management on multiple sales channels, including FBA and other selling platforms. Kits and raw material components can be tracked more efficiently. This helps warehouse teams to locate and assemble orders with fewer errors. Purchase orders can be created by pre-set triggers based on inventory, pending, and orders. This can help you manage your supply chain more efficiently. 

Advanced reporting tools can help you better manage ROI and turn rates. It leads to better purchasing and forecasting decisions. 

All of this lets you keep a step ahead of potential problems, improve your forecasting, and allow you to make smarter purchasing and selling decisions. SkuVault makes it easy to generate on-demand reports in real-time. Reports are easy to customize and export. 

Here are a few of the ways you can filter Skuvault’s reporting tools to analyze your business workflow:

• Historical reporting
• Forecasting
• Track every action at each point in the product cycle from order to fulfillment, including pick, pack, ship. 
• View stock in real time across all FBA and third-party platforms
• Create P. O. ’s based on what’s pending, in-house, and on order
• Transfer on-hand inventory between warehouses and/or retail stores
• Identify cycle count opportunities and prevent errors

Considering a New Inventory Management Software? You Can’t Afford to Miss Out on SkuVault

SkuVault’s eCommerce Inventory Management System (IMS) connects all your sales channels into a single interface, helps you organize your warehouse, and manage inventory efficiently with simple workflows. 

Sell Faster. Pick Faster. Ship Faster. 

Contact SkuVault today and let us show you how our eCommerce Inventory Management Software can streamline your business and improve your bottom line.