Regardless of the size or sector of your company, achieving balanced stock management is a task that requires constant attention from professionals. Logistics software allows you to achieve this much-desired balance by minimizing the impact of demand fluctuations, supply chain disruptions, and other factors that put pressure on stock and warehouse management.
Agile stock management is a fundamental pillar for the success of companies with logistics operations. These companies face enormous challenges every day, ranging from demand forecasting to managing global supply chains, while seeking to reduce costs and waste and increase efficiency. In this context, logistics and stock management software is an essential tool to ensure product availability in the right quantity and at the right time, without shortages or excess.
However, logistics software is much more than a stock tracking tool. Its benefits include generating predictive analytics, automating processes, and providing real-time visibility of the entire logistics chain. Thanks to its level of specialization, this software meets the needs of logistics operations of all sizes, simplifying stock management and providing data that leads to more accurate strategic decisions and ensures business competitiveness.
Let’s start by analyzing some of the main external and internal factors that impact logistics operations and stock control.
5 Factors Impacting Stock and Logistics Management
1. Demand Fluctuations
Market trends, economic context, seasonality, or specific events are some of the aspects that contribute to demand fluctuations for certain products. In this scenario, to manage stocks effectively, it is essential to have tools—such as logistics software—that allow you to predict demand peaks or lows, so as not to accumulate excess stock or face shortages.
2. Complex Supply Chains
Involving multiple suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers at various points around the globe, supply chains present a high degree of complexity. In this context, coordinating delivery schedules is a thankless task, and the levels of difficulty become even higher in cases of disruptions caused by events such as geopolitical conflicts, wars, economic crises, or even public health emergencies like COVID-19.
3. Associated Costs
To maintain balanced stocks—having products to meet orders without accumulating excess—it is essential to have an in-depth understanding of all associated costs. Whether storage costs, order and replenishment costs, costs inherent to the capital invested in stocks, or in cases of deteriorated or obsolete products, the value that gets “tied up” or lost in poor stock management can cause significant losses for companies.
4. Product Variety
The greater the variety of products, the more challenging stock management can become. Each item has different demand levels, life cycles, and storage requirements, and therefore, the more diverse the product range, the more important it is to have logistics systems and software prepared for the task.
5. Human and Technological Factors
It’s not enough to have logistics software—you need to know how to use it and make the most of the tool. More than robust logistics software, it’s essential to have a technology consulting partner for businesses who understands the needs of operations and, in a continuous improvement logic, works together and long-term with the client to implement adaptations and upgrades whenever necessary.
With specialized teams in logistics solutions, PONTUAL is more than just a software supplier—we are a technology partner always ready to listen to your needs. Contact us.
Similarly, aspects related to decision-making such as bias, intuition-based decisions, and other human factors can impact stock management. This is a factor whose impact can be significantly reduced by using data and information from logistics software.
The Importance of Stock Control and Management in Businesses of all Sizes
Ensuring stock availability while minimizing maintenance costs is, as we have seen, an essential balancing act for logistics operations. Customers who receive their orders without issues and on the agreed timing are certainly more likely to do business with you again. On the other hand, failing to meet orders due to stock shortages damages the company’s reputation and results in revenue loss, as nowadays, customers cannot wait and end up buying from competitors.
Keeping warehouses organized, with up-to-date counts and item locations, is another essential aspect of stock management. Through logistics software, it is possible to access sales and movement history, which allows for implementing product location strategies to speed up picking times, create picking zones for more popular items, among others.
Stock management software also eliminates many manual processes, saving time and freeing up teams to focus on more strategic and profitable tasks.
Stock Management for Large Companies
The larger a logistics operation, the more important it is to have a global visibility of the company’s stocks. Often, these companies have multiple warehouses in different locations and may also have stores or points of sale with additional stock, as well as returned items in transit.
In these cases, the pressure to maximize profit is high, as the monetary value of the stock involved is also much greater than in smaller operations. Storage and space management costs can also increase, and in the case of companies with perishable products—such as in the food or pharmaceutical sectors—expiration dates can expire, causing even more losses.
In large operations, manually tracking stock is practically impossible. Logistics software is the most agile tool to address these cases, as it allows users to stay updated on the status of all orders, ensuring that stock for all points of sale will be available in the right quantities.
Stock Management for Small Businesses
If you think a smaller warehouse will be less affected by stock management issues…think again. Despite dealing with less stock volume and, therefore, less money, smaller businesses have a much smaller margin for error compared to large-scale logistics operations.
Less warehouse space requires more agile management of its use. In this case, having incorrect stock levels has more immediate consequences. If, for example, you have 10 units of a product in stock but could have sold 15, even though it may not seem like a big difference, it’s 50% more sales that didn’t happen. In a large logistics operation, which has, for example, stocks of 5,000 or more products, 5 unsold items make much less difference.
Logistics software allows you to obtain demand forecasts and create more accurate planning, also contributing to better space organization, speeding up product picking, and thus increasing productivity.
Having an efficient, agile, and profitable logistics operation is, nowadays, a highly complex challenge. Overcoming all internal and external factors, as well as the inherent difficulties of operations of all sizes, requires tools that are truly up to the task.
Are you familiar with the successful partnership between Deiba and PONTUAL? Learn how this logistics operator increased agility, scale, and efficiency in multi-warehouse management with the implementation and integration of Eyepeak logistics software and Cegid Primavera ERP.
PONTUAL is a partner of the largest ERP and logistics software suppliers in the market. Additionally, we have teams of consultants with technical skills that allow them to tailor the tools to all your business needs.
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