Grocery store inventory management can be challenging: You must carry products your customers want, with neither too many nor too few on hand. If you run out of stock often, you miss out on revenue opportunities; if you carry excess supply, you’re impeding your cash flow and financial health.
But how do you track thousands of items and hit the sweet spot every time? This article explores the top grocery store inventory management best practices to help you boost your profitability.
Here are 7 reasons why you should invest in grocery store inventory management:
Grocery store inventory management can be overwhelming. These best practices will help you make the most of your resources.
You can’t afford to make inventory decisions based on guesswork or manual processes. Additionally, you must have a bird’s-eye view of customer preferences and market trends to make accurate forecasts and stock the right products at the right time.
An all-in-one POS system, like DUMAC’s RORC, helps you track sales across channels, provides real-time reporting, and syncs with your back-end software (e.g., accounting) to give you complete control over your inventory and operations. The data insights also set the foundation for putting other best practices into action.
You must stock just the right amount of perishables and daily-use edible products, such as vegetables, fruits, dairy, and bread, so they don’t stay on the shelf for too long and go stale. Analyze sales data to understand changes in consumer behaviors and surges in demand (e.g., during weekends and holidays) to stock the right quantity at the right time.
A POS system with an inventory management component can show employees which products need to sell first and flag potential expires. Having expired products on the shelf can create a negative impression, tarnish your reputation, and deter shoppers from buying other perishables from your store.
Use a POS system that allows employees to locate each item in the store or warehouse. The improved visibility enables your team to help customers find the products they need quickly. Meanwhile, warehouse managers can replenish products promptly to avoid having empty shelves and missing out on sales.
You can also use cameras or a digital inventory management system to monitor stock on store shelves and alert employees when to restock products. Accurate store inventory allows team members to spend less time retrieving and putting back products. Instead, they can focus on servicing customers and improving the shopping experience.
A POS system that offers real-time inventory tracking and reporting can show you which products are selling fast and which are just taking up precious shelf space. Besides ensuring you have enough bestsellers in stock, you can see which products are hampering your cash flow.
With the data-driven insights, you can implement quick-turn tactics like marking down the zero-movers, relocating them to a shelf space more likely to capture shoppers’ attention, or moving them to another store location where they sell better. You may also stop reordering these items and instead focus your resources on stocking products that are popular among your customers.
Prices for perishables such as dairy, produce, meats, and prepared foods change frequently. You should establish a seamless workflow to respond to the latest vendor-supplied data, update pricing across systems, and ensure all shelf labels are correct in every store location. Automating the process is crucial for reducing labor costs and maximizing your profits.
You can update pricing at all customer touchpoints, including store shelves, mobile apps, and eCommerce sites, with a few clicks simultaneously via a cloud-based, integrated POS solution. Electronic shelf labels (ESLs) add even more agility — for instance, you can price-match a competitor in real-time and run micro-sale (e.g., price reduction on lunch sandwich at 2 pm) to pivot pricing based on demands.
A cloud-based POS system is the foundation of modern inventory management. You can sync data from multiple locations and adjust your pricing strategy in real-time to adapt to shifts in demand. Moreover, you can manage all store locations via a single dashboard from anywhere to align promotions and deliver a consistent customer experience.
DUMAC’s RORC is an end-to-end solution integrating advanced POS and inventory management functions into a single platform. You can track stock across stores and generate real-time reports to support accurate decision-making.
Learn more about RORC and get in touch to see how we can help you optimize inventory management with the latest technologies.