Why inventory management software?

For more and more companies an approach to maintaining control of key tools, consumables, and other items on the shop floor using vending machines and inventory management software has become an integral aspect of their overall business strategy.

The term “vending” is thrown around a lot, and if you picture snack or canned drink machines when you hear the term, you’re in for a bit of a shock. There’s an ever-growing portfolio of lockers, carousels, drawer-based dispensers, retrofitted tool cabinets, and so on, available to meet your storage needs. Each promises security and control in line with your operational needs.

While hardware offers physical security, security only takes you so far. If you’re going to get the full value of intelligent inventory management, your software package must ensure availability as well as the data you need to understand item usage and make smart decisions for your business.

This information is the key that turns the lock of your success. And it can’t be bound to a vending machine, or a desktop computer, or a single geographical location. In an increasingly tight-knit world, where our challenges are global, solutions have to be global, too.

How do you determine which inventory management software is best for your business?

As you investigate available solutions, you’ll see edge- and Cloud-based solutions to accessing this information. These certainly look impressive, but what matters more is the usability and functionality of the system you choose.

An ideal system will take the administrative, reporting, and procurement functions of desktop systems off the ground and launch them into the Cloud. It should provide 24/7/365 access to your data from anywhere in the world with Internet access, all through a web-based portal site that means you won’t have to install software on your computer. 

While all this is happening in the Cloud, dedicated inventory management software is used on the ground to manage equipment and support the full array of stockroom functions—from receipts of Items and their stocking to their final disposal when they’re no longer useful.

This system should support a wide range of important features such as labeling, ticket printing, expiration date tracking, and ticket printing. Automated ordering is essential, to reduce the risk of item shortages and attendant drops in productivity.

You’ll want secure multi-user and multi-vendor access so that anyone involved in maintaining your system is able to perform only the tasks they need to without the risk of impacting other areas and providing complete accountability. To facilitate integration into existing corporate infrastructure will require the ability to interface with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems so that the usage and ordering data generated can be put to its fullest use.

Systems of this kind should offer automated threat monitoring, guarding against the viruses, malware, and ransomware that we’ve seen sow so much chaos, as well as automated version management and operating system updates for computers operating vending machines.

Inventory software of this kind will allow any company to get the most from its investment in vending, and to reap the rewards of intelligent inventory management.

Want to know more about how SupplyPoint can help you achieve these goals? Contact us here.