Take Stock of Your Inventory with Sortly

As a business owner, I know you juggle countless responsibilities daily. You meticulously track sales and expenses, find ways to delight customers, guide your team, and keep growing the business. It‘s natural to have a hundred thoughts running through your mind constantly!

Now, imagine adding inventory management to your never-ending to-do list. How much stock do we have? Did all those orders ship out? Are we running low on certain SKUs? I can understand the headaches inventory planning brings.

But what if I told you inventory management doesn‘t have to be challenging? Yes, you may deal with stockouts occasionally or scramble when a sudden order depletes your on-hand inventory. But with the right systems and discipline, you can take control of your inventory.

That‘s why in this guide, I‘ll walk you through:

• Why inventory management matters
• Common inventory predicaments businesses face
• How Sortly‘s features can transform inventory tracking
• Real-world examples and results from Sortly customers
• Steps to seamlessly implement Sortly across your business
• Expert tips to further optimize your inventory

By the end of this guide, you will feel empowered to get your inventory in shape. So let‘s get started, shall we?

Why Proper Inventory Management is Crucial

Inventory forms a massive chunk of a company‘s assets. For retailers, inventory is one of the largest line items on the balance sheet. On average, small businesses have 30.7% of their total assets tied up in inventory. For some, this figure can go as high as 50%!

Given the substantial investment in inventory, its performance directly impacts your sales, costs, and bottom line. In fact, research by RSM shows:

• Companies with effective inventory management enjoy 2-5x higher gross margins compared to competitors.
• Businesses with real-time visibility into inventory experience 80% fewer stockouts.
• Well-managed inventory lowers carrying costs by 20-25% for most firms.

Conversely, poor inventory control leads to a host of problems:

Out-of-Stocks

Running out of stock during peak sales season or due to unreliable suppliers results in missed revenue opportunities. Customers simply shift to competitors that have inventory readily available.

Excess Inventory

Overordering inventory ties up precious working capital while contributing to losses from spoilage, expiry, pilferage, and markdowns.

Inaccurate Data

Without meticulous tracking, discrepancies creep in between the inventory quantities showing in your system versus what‘s physically present. This distorts reorder decisions.

Operational Inefficiencies

Locating items across warehouses becomes tedious without organized storage and tracking. Physical counts also take longer without accurate perpetual records.

Regulatory Non-Compliance

For regulated industries like pharma and food, incorrect inventory records can result incompliance issues and product recalls.

These repercussions underscore why inventory management cannot be an afterthought for businesses. Modern systems like Sortly make it possible to gain end-to-end visibility and control over your inventory.

Top Inventory Management Hurdles and How Sortly Solves Them

Having implemented inventory systems at Fortune 500 companies, I can empathize with the obstacles you face:

1. Inaccurate Tracking

Manually monitoring hundreds of SKUs across multiple locations is error-prone. Without precise inventory counts, you remain unaware of shrinkage and requisition more stock than needed.

This is where Sortly‘s barcode scanning capability helps – unique QR and barcode labels are generated for each item and location. Once affixed, inventory movements and counts happen by simply scanning the labels via the mobile app. This maintains an accurate perpetual inventory record in Sortly.

2. Inadequate Visibility

Limited visibility into inventory across distributed warehouses, stores, and vehicles impedes timely decision making and fulfillment.

Sortly delivers complete centralized visibility through a unified dashboard reflecting inventory quantities, orders, shipments, and other transactions across your business in real-time.

3. Stockouts and Excesses

Forecasting errors, supply-demand mismatches, and store-level stock imbalances result in lost sales or overstocks.

With Sortly, gain precision in inventory planning by analyzing past demand patterns, inventory velocities, and lead times for different products. Configurable reorder point and stock level alerts also prevent stockouts.

4. Storage Inefficiencies

Cluttered warehouses make locating and counting inventory extremely tedious. Valuable storage real estate ends up underutilized.

Get optimized warehouse usage with Sortly by defining storage zones, rows, racks, bins, and pallets within your warehouses. Granular tracking at storage location levels eliminates misplacement.

5. Security Risks

Inventory is always susceptible to theft, diversion, deterioration, and catastrophes without adequate controls.

Sortly boosts inventory security through user-level access permissions, activity logs, and escalation workflows. Alerts notify instantly of unexplained inventory changes.

6. Analog Records

Pen-and-paper records make inventory tracking slow, opaque, and fragmented. Data exists in silos and doesn‘t reflect ground realities.

Sortly replaces analog methods with end-to-end digitization – inventory transactions happen right within the software and sync to the cloud in real-time. Reporting provides a unified data source.

7. Lack of Insights

Without analyzing inventory metrics and trends, critical issues stay hidden until problems arise and business suffers.

Get complete visibility with Sortly‘s intuitive analytics and custom reports on inventory turnover, velocity, stock health, storage capacity, transactions, and other KPIs.

These examples illustrate how a purpose-built solution like Sortly eliminates the chaos, uncertainty, and risks surrounding inventory management.

Real-World Results with Sortly

Leading brands have unlocked substantial benefits across their inventory operations using Sortly:

• Lyft slashed time spent on monthly physical inventory from 80 hours manually to just 4 hours using Sortly‘s barcode scanning.

• Sports apparel brand Lids reduced rental costs by right-sizing inventory storage space requirements revealed by Sortly.

• The store ops team at eyewear brand Warby Parker saves 8 hours per store annually using Sortly for inventory audits.

• PwC accelerated the asset tracking process by 75% using Sortly during office relocations.

• San Diego Zoo gained 99% accuracy in endangered species inventory using Sortly‘s animal tagging and user access controls.

• University library California State Fullerton cut artifact misplacement by 60% with comprehensive tracking in Sortly.

These examples validate Sortly‘s utility across industries like retail, healthcare, automotive, education, non-profits, and more.

Intriguing use cases I‘ve seen beyond pure-play inventory management include:

• Tracking high-value collectibles for auction houses
• Monitoring medical equipment in hospitals
• Managing costumes and props by entertainment studios
• Following curriculum tools and devices in schools
• Cataloging artifacts and artwork in museums
• Tracking evidence and files in law enforcement
• Managing fleet vehicles and fuel in transportation
• Controlling IT assets and servers in corporations

The possibilities with Sortly are endless!

How to Get Started with Sortly at Your Business

I know you‘re eager to get your hands on Sortly and experience the benefits. The quick 10 step process below will get you underway:

Step 1: Sign up for a free Sortly account at sortly.com and invite your team. Select the right pricing plan for your business.

Step 2: Download the Sortly mobile apps for iOS and Android to enable scanning and tracking from anywhere.

Step 3: Create items in Sortly for each product, part, or asset you want to track. Upload images, set ideal quantities, and define other details.

Step 4: Print barcode/QR code labels for each unit using Sortly‘s label printer integration. Affix these tags on your physical inventory.

Step 5: Define warehouses, zones, aisles, shelves, and storage locations in Sortly to mirror your physical storage layouts.

Step 6: Configure users, roles, permissions, and access levels to control who can view and update inventory data.

Step 7: Set reorder points, ideal stock levels, and other inventory alerts based on your replenishment policies.

Step 8: Use Sortly‘s mobile scanning apps, barcode readers, or CSV import to quickly tag and track inventory.

Step 9: Build custom reports and dashboards in Sortly to gain insights into stock statistics, trends, and metrics.

Step 10: Leverage 3rd party app integrations like Shopify, NetSuite, and accounting tools for synchronized inventory visibility.

Sortly‘s intuitive interface makes the entire setup process smooth and straightforward. Their support team is also super responsive in case you need any assistance.

Within a day or two of focused effort, you can have Sortly up and running to take your inventory management to the next level!

Expert Tips to Further Optimize Inventory Tracking

While Sortly lays the software foundation, optimizing inventory requires bringing discipline to your policies and processes.

Here are proven best practices I recommend once you implement Sortly:

• Classify your inventory into A, B, C buckets based on value and velocity to prioritize focus. Set stock levels accordingly.

• Standardize item names/SKUs for consistent identification across systems and locations.

• Store fast-moving inventory closer to shipping areas to streamline order fulfillment.

• Calculate safety stock levels based on average lead times and demand variability.

• Use FEFO (First Expiry First Out) to issue items nearing expiration first.

• Perform blind cycle counts periodically to find gaps between system records and physical inventory.

• Build alerts into Standard Operating Procedures for replenishment, transfers, returns etc.

• Train staff thoroughly on inventory processes and Sortly scanning workflows.

• Control access diligently, limit adjustments/deletes, and periodically review user activity logs.

• Integrate Sortly with procurement and order management workflows for closed-loop visibility.

• Analyze days-on-hand inventory, velocity, ABC classification, and other KPIs in Sortly.

With these disciplined inventory management principles and Sortly‘s modern tracking technology, your business can gain the clarity and control needed to optimize inventory investments.

You will know exactly what inventory you have at any given time, where it‘s located, and when it needs to be replenished. Operations will become leaner, costs lower, and customers more delighted.

So don‘t let the chaos of inventory weigh you down! Tame your stock tracking with Sortly. Let me know if you have any other questions. I‘ll be glad to help a business owner like you streamline inventory operations. Just drop me a note!