

As your organization does business every day, there are a lot of moving (and nonmoving) parts to keep all facets progressing in harmony.
It seems pretty simple when it’s put into words. But the organization and management of raw materials or finished goods in the manufacturing space or the products on retail warehouse shelves – can be complex. It’s even more complicated if you track assets or inventory with manual processes like pen-and-paper or spreadsheets — or don’t manage these parts of your business at all. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone, according to the Wasp Barcode State of Small Business Report.
When this is true of your company, you can’t trust sales numbers or truly know if your sales staff’s mobile devices are misplaced or have “walked off” some point along the way. Without automated management, human error can add up over time, resulting in inaccurate reports and unhappy board members when sales are down and assets seem to disappear. And in the meantime, customer satisfaction plummets when their favorite item is never in stock.
Your company’s assets are important. The items your company owns make doing day-to-day routines possible – from desks, chairs, and computers in the front office, to smart phones and scanners for your warehouse and field workers. If you don’t track these assets, you’re likely to lose or misplace costly items or let them get old or outdated. This can cost a lot of time and money.
Nick Heller, production manager at the University of Phoenix Stadium, said this was the case for the production department of the Arizona Cardinals football team. With no asset management system in place, he never knew when the last time equipment was used or who used it last if an item went missing. Often multiple events would be scheduled on a given day, with up to $100,000 dollars of valuable equipment used. It was impossible to keep track of what was where. However, since the crew implemented an asset management system, they have saved five to 20 labor hours per event.
Like the Arizona Cardinals, your company can significantly improve efficiency due to the following factors.
As with your assets, you absolutely must track your business’ inventory. When you have a firm grasp on what items are available to ship and what you don’t, it’s near impossible to serve your customers with excellence. That’s the place Process Control Outlet (PCO), an industrial electronics reseller, found itself. Even after being in business 13 years, the company had never taken control of its inventory.
“When our sales representatives received an order, they had to walk through the warehouse to verify whether the items were actually on the shelf,” said Robert Gonzales, assistant director of marketing and communications for PCO. “Our employees wasted a lot of time, plus they could not give our customers the immediate response they deserve.”
Your inventory is the main revenue generator, so why risk losing sales because you simply don’t know what you have on your warehouse shelves.
PCO experienced immediate payback through inventory management, to the tune of $35 thousand annually. And inventory costs were cut by 50 percent. Your business can also boost your bottom line by taking control of assets and inventory and setting your business up for success into the future.
Copyright © 2023 SCORE Association, SCORE.org
Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.