Inventory System Disadvantages

Benefits of an Inventory Management System

There are many benefits to implementing an inventory system and some of these benefits are; to assure that goods will be available for customers when required, to ensure to have repeat customers, to increase the accuracy of inventory orders and to increase employee efficiency (Kontus, 2014). When the suitable inventory management system is implemented it automatically improves the business performance. In addition, as indicated by Henrietta, the overall product design and the product’s individual features create benefits for customers and the benefits give customers a reason to buy because they explain how your product or service improves their lives (Henrietta, 2014). The nine (9) key features as

This section will explore some of the possible disadvantages of implementing an inventory system within a small business. See below the disadvantages of implementing an inventory management system:

Additional training – This is a disadvantage of implementing an inventory management system can be that it requires businesses to offer additional training to each of their employees because of the new procedures and complexities that will inevitably come with such a new system. Employees will need to be trained on how to use the company 's new system and its special tools and equipment, such as its scanners. With a greater number of people entering transactions into the system, the company assumes a much greater risk of mistakes being made due to human error, Robertson, 2018.

Increased cost – This is a general example of any new implementation, the cost to purchase and integrate a new system within the operational process of the existing business can be expensive. This can be due to the actual cost of the application or the number of areas that will require the integration of its application features, tools and equipment. This cost extends to the continued maintenance and periodical upgrades of the new systems and its features as time progresses, a point supported by the works of Robertson,

Retailers employ various strategies and tactics in an ever-changing landscape to ensure that the right stock is on the right shelf at the right time (Sammut, 2017). With this ever-changing landscape, it behoves organisations to be aware of the future trends within the industry. Two area of focus is data analytics and cloud services as shown below:

• Data analytics is the latest trend in inventory management (Bruce, 2017). Through the use of big data, an organisation can have access to more useful data about the efficiency of inventory management. These analytical insights can help automatically identify best practice improvements and predict what actions that a business needs to make.

• The second area of focus will be, cloud-based services. This functionality can allow access to the inventory management system from any place, at any time. This is convenient as managers frequently go on business trips, so this way they can still access all the data concerning the