#multichannel inventory

Going multichannel allows you to expose your products to different kinds of customers, generate more revenue, and expand your brand presence. As running an eCommerce retail can be tricky already, it gets even tougher when you plan to expand your business to multiple sales channels.

As you shift to multichannel sales, you are likely to encounter commonly faced challenges associated with managing channel-wise inventory. To help you kick things off, let’s understand the most common inventory challenges and their possible solutions.

Multichannel Inventory ChallengesOverselling/Underselling

If your inventory is not optimized for each channel separately and isn’t updated in real-time, you may end up selling the same product (SKU) to two different customers. So, not having sufficient inventory can cost you unnecessary cancellations, order delays, and terrible reviews across the sales channels.

If you’ve overestimated the demand and assigned too much stock to a sales channel, it could lead to a loss of revenue, or drain your financial resources restricting your future investments.

No Inventory Visibility

Orders can come from anywhere, and customers expect a seamless shopping experience irrespective of the channel they choose. Therefore, it is essential that you consistently keep track of your inventory across all your sales channels.

Tracking your inventory manually restricts you from complete visibility and complicates your operations. The volume of manual errors, mishandled or unassigned stocks, etc. keeps on rising because the inventory tracking is not optimized properly.

Inaccurate Stock Levels During Promotions

Different marketplaces run sales campaigns with different guidelines. For instance, marketplaces have strict rules for reporting accurate stock levels during special sale promotions. If you fail to do so, they can penalize you severely. So, you need to be even more vigilant of your stocks on all sales channels during these periods.

If you outsource your logistics processes, the same needs to be followed by your 3PL service providers as well. Therefore, you need to align your sales operations with your logistics providers and update your stock levels each time you receive orders from respective channels.

Lack of Reverse Flow Logistics

Advanced processes like reverse order logistics can impact customer experience and give accurate inventory visibility. Most customers put a seamless shopping experience as a high priority. Hence, you need to pay attention to the canceled/return/exchange orders and implement standard processes for them.

Missing Out on Sales Trends

Your sales data can offer significant insights for your multichannel business. Reviewing it can help you modify strategies that will help your inventory management decisions. For example: The sale of festive apparels shoots up during Hari Raya, or pharma retailers restock flu medicines at large volumes during monsoons.Inventory management is a critical component to overcome all these operational hurdles. With an appropriate inventory management solution all these challenges and boost your multichannel eCommerce sales exponentially.