Do You Know Offhand How Much Inventory You Have on Hand?

Could you use a hand with managing your inventory? It’s not easy to keep track of thousands of items leaving and coming into your warehouse(s). But knowing how much inventory you have on hand at any given moment is an important part of running a business.

Do You Know About Your OTHER Stock Options?

Every company has plenty of stock options, not just publicly traded companies. How could that be possible? Because I’m being facetious and talking about inventory stock, not shares of a company.

Your other stock options are just as important as pieces of paper that represent potential ownership of a company. How you store items in a warehouse might seem like a small thing, but by optimizing your warehouse setup, you can save time and money, which eventually adds up to a huge improvement.

Farewell, Excel

For years you’ve been tied down by the limits of Excel as an inventory management tool while you tried to run your growing business.

But you don’t have to stay there any longer. It’s time to break free and enjoy the benefits of using a true inventory management solution that is designed to handle your business’ logistical needs.

Some of the disadvantages of using Excel for managing inventory include:

Shaking Up Assumptions About Inventory Management

Let’s shake up a few common assumptions about inventory management.

It’s Going to Be Hard

Managing inventory isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world. It does take effort. But that doesn’t mean it has to be extremely hard or insurmountable. It’s all about how you look at it.

If you try to comprehend everything going on in your inventory all at once, then yeah, it can seem ridiculously hard. But if you get into a rhythm of handling jobs one at a time and keeping things moving in and out smoothly, it doesn’t seem so huge anymore. Inventory management software can really help segment jobs, speed up the receiving process, automate reorders, and do other things to make managing inventory much easier.

How to Know You’re Managing Inventory the Wrong Way

When I was a kid, I had a Physical Education teacher who tried to teach me how to shoot a basketball the right way. I thought the way I was doing it was fine because that was the way I had always done it, and it seemed to work just fine.

But he told me that I had just gotten good at shooting the wrong way, and I needed to break my old habits if I wanted to compete with other kids. He turned out to be right.

Similarly, small and midsize businesses can get really good at managing their inventory the wrong way, but it won’t be good for them in the long run. It can actually hold them back from being more competitive. Unfortunately, habits die hard, and the longer you wait to uproot these old ways, the harder it gets.

It’s Time to Start Thinking About Warehouse Management in 3D

Warehouses have a huge amount of floor space to store items in. But you have probably also noticed that they have tall ceilings.

Take a look at the picture on the right. What do you notice? There’s a lot of unused space. Sure, the floor is covered with boxes, but what about all of the empty vertical space?

It’s time to start managing your warehouse in 3D, not just 2D.

5 Reasons You Need an Advanced Workforce Management Solution

Your workforce is at least as important as your inventory. If you don’t have people to move stuff around and get products to your customers then it doesn’t matter how much inventory you have in stock.

Effective workforce management is something that eludes a lot of small businesses because they don’t have the resources that larger organizations do. Of course, small businesses don’t have a whole lot of employees at the start, so they can get away with using Excel spreadsheets or even paper notes to keep track of employees’ hours and schedules.

But eventually they’ll come to a point where they need something a bit more advanced. A workforce management solution can make life easier for leaders and their employees. Here are five reasons you should:

5 Reasons Employees Wind Up Doing Things They Weren’t Originally Hired for

Are you doing the exact same things today that were on your job description when you were originally hired? If you stay at a job for any significant amount of time, you’ll probably answer no.

Why is that? Things change, and so do people. Your company isn’t the same as it was a few years ago, and you’re not the same person you were back then, either.

Let’s talk about five reasons employees often wind up doing things they weren’t originally hired to do.

Criticism Is Critical to Your Success

It hurts to be told when we’ve made a mistake. But the sad truth is that we grow the most when we are willing to accept criticism from people and make changes based on their feedback.

Not All Advice Is Equal

Of course, not everyone’s advice is equally valuable. Some people are just angry and wanting to tear you down. You don’t have to take everyone’s advice. It’s important to protect yourself and yet be ready to allow useful feedback in.

The key is to set your pride aside. Even if someone is saying really painful things to you, know that those things don’t make you a bad person. They are a chance to reflect on what you’re doing and find ways to improve.

How Would Drones Affect the Way Companies Manage Their Inventory?

Drones could turn out to be a game changer in the business world. As companies like Amazon prepare to use drones to ship packages from a warehouse to someone’s back porch in just a few minutes, we’re left to wonder if this will turn out to be the wave of the future.