Are You Managing Your Products Effectively?
Every retail chain must manage its inventory effectively or it will lose profits. Merchandising is one of the most important aspects of the retail business and there are many ways to do it unprofitably. Whether you have one retail store or you manage an entire chain, you’ll need to control your inventory levels, manage prices, and maximize sales in order to remain profitable. Here are five ways to manage your products more effectively with the right retail product management software .
- Price management – Let’s start with prices. How you price each product determines how many units you’ll sell, which will determine your level of profitability on those items. Your retail chain needs a solution that will make price management easier, more versatile, and effective across the entire chain.
- Categorize your products correctly – No one understands your retail chain better than you do. Product management solutions that define your product categories for you aren’t helpful. You need a solution that will allow you to define your product categories and place each product in the right category for easy organization and access.
- Optimize your transfers – Let’s face it, not every product will move at every store. Different demographics prefer different product models and merchandise. When you have a need to transfer inventory from one store to another, you need a way to do this effectively, efficiently, and affordably.
- Keep accurate reports – Effective retail analytics involves more than just knowing how much of each product you have in stock. You need to track each SKU, analyze your inventory levels, and predict how much of each product you’ll need from season to season.
- Manage centrally – You’ll be much more effective at managing your products across your entire chain if you manage the process from one central location. That includes product purchasing, allocations, replenishment, distribution, and transfers. You can have decentralized processes that allow store managers to discuss product needs with each other, but the process needs to be centralized.
Retail Product management is a multi-tiered process with many moving parts. It’s also an ongoing process. You need a solution that will make it as seamless as possible for each level of your retail operation to manage inventories effectively, efficiently, and profitably.