5 Key Strategies for Effective Stock Control in E-commerce

Some online retailers use inventory control to mitigate challenges when they come up, but you must go beyond that. The goal of effective stock control is to create a system that will prevent any problems from popping up.

Without any hiccups, your operation will run smoothly, ensuring consistent growth and sales. So, let’s dive into the 5 key strategies for effective stock control.

1. Take A Look At Stock Trends

Before you start building a strategy, you need baseline data. Take a look at your stock trends to see which items have more demand and which are slow-moving. Check historical sales data and consumer trend reports to design a stock control strategy.

When you identify these products, you will also have information on the quantity to keep on hand. While this isn’t a foolproof tip, as numbers fluctuate over the years, you can guess how much product to keep.

Always give yourself space for demand to go up or down, and you’ll make the most of this strategy. You can create a forecast manually, but this can be time-consuming. Investing in a high-quality warehouse management system will give you all the necessary details for efficient stock control.

2. Choose The ABC Method

Not all products are the same. You might know that some of your products go out of sale as soon as they hit the shelf while others take some time to go out.

Prioritising the right stock can help you keep up with this demand. The ABC method is a tried and tested way to categorise your products according to their demand. Here’s how it works:

• Class A products are essential items, often of high value. They take up nearly 10-20% of your total stock.
• Class B products are important but not crucial. These correspond to roughly 30% of the stock.
• Class C products are of low importance and take up nearly 50% of your inventory.

The ABC strategy will help you optimise your inventory and keep up with sales forecasts. Once you have all your stock divided into categories, you can ensure better inventory management.

3. Focus On Product Organisation

This might seem like a simple tip, but it can help you in the long run if used effectively. Unorganised products often lead to inventory management mishaps, and mislabelled products and items without proper identification can lead to expensive mishaps.

Consider using barcodes—an economical but highly effective way of organising your stock. All you need to do is scan the code and get all the necessary information for your item. Do this process anytime you move, ship, or receive products.

With barcodes, you can avoid mistyped SKU numbers, human errors, and bogus inventory. Additionally, you can improve packing slips to reduce shipping errors. Try colour-coding your packing slips according to the product category. This method allows you to distinguish between items visually and makes organisation easier.

Consider partnering with a 3PL like Meteor Space for better organisation. With our automated picking and packing process, you won’t have to worry about misplaced orders. Our innovative WMS system organises your products with clear SKU information, reducing human error and ensuring up to 99% order accuracy.

4. Stay On Top of Best Before Dates

If your products have a shelf life, make sure to get them out as soon as possible. Expired products sitting in the warehouse will inflate your stock numbers while leaving you with unusable products.

Fixing such problems can be time-consuming and costly. Instead, create strategies to ensure perishable items move steadily out of the warehouse well before their best-before date.

This way, you won’t lose money on ruined products, and your customers will have enough time to enjoy their items. One great tip is to create reminders for each product category so you know when to send them out.

A reminder system will also keep you on track on when to shift stock before the products expire. Another helpful strategy is to check the best-by date as you pack each order. If you’re packing items in a bundle, that doesn’t mean all the products have the same best-before date, so note this to avoid a bad customer experience.

5. Keep Stock Moving With JIT Method

In JIT or the Just In Time method, you only order the number of items you need, exactly when you need them, maintaining steady rotation in your inventory. With this method, the volume of your inventory more or less matches the number of orders fulfilled.

The key philosophy for JIT method is being able to meet customers demands but also being able to quickly order more stock for the next set of orders.

This stock control strategy was created to increase efficiency, cut inventory holding costs, and reduce waste by purchasing only products that were sure to sell. However, several factors, including a streamlined supply chain system and fast delivery, are needed to maintain this method.

The JIT method can also fail due to several outside disruptions, such as sudden demand surges, supplier unreliability and natural disasters that can halt supply chains. Such problems can create costly hiccups, compromising product quality and decreasing customer satisfaction.

Despite its potential problems, the JIT method is an excellent way of controlling your stock and making sure it stays in rotation. This method reduces storage costs, enhances operational efficiency, reduces waste, and improves your business finances.

The constant turnover of products also ensures all items are of excellent quality and are relevant to customer demands. Before you consider the JIT method, circle back to our first tip about looking at stock trends.

The key to a successful JIT system is predicting customers’ demands. Once you have this data, you’ll have a better idea of what products to order and how much of them are needed.