RPA For Inventory Management In Retail Industry

Challenges faced by Retailers in inventory management

The biggest challenge faced by retail industry is managing inventory, as it requires data collection and data analysis from multiple sources. Retailers are struggling to monitor the amount, location, and pricing of products available for their customers with growing demand and disruption in supply chain.

In this blog you will get to know how RPA can be used to streamline inventory management in the retail industry.

Retailers ensure that they have enough merchandise to sell, without risk of stock out situation or carrying excess supply through inventory management. Maintaining low cost and better understanding sales patterns are made possible with excellent inventory management, which also supports supply forecasting.

It becomes difficult to assure that the store will be profitable without inventory management. Retailers need to use software technology to gather the data because manual gathering of data is ineffective as it consumes a lot of time and has possibilities of mistakes. In certain cases purchasing additional software turns out to be very expensive and requires extra efforts to integrate it with the existing system of the organization.

RPA software technology can be a solution for organizations that want to automate inventory management.

Ways in which RPA in inventory management helps retail industry

Implementing  RPA in inventory management  benefits retailers with accurate inventory level tracing, demand and supply forecasting, as well as by streamlining communication, between all suppliers.

RPA software technology can benefit any retail organization with proper discovery, mapping, and deployment. The bots can be used for more than just tracking inventories, sending out notifications, and transferring data across systems.

These are some specific use cases of RPA in Inventory management in retail industry:

1. Limiting the risk of stock out situation - Retailers have trouble with stock-out situations as they result in loss of sales till the next shipment of merchandise. This impacts customer satisfaction, as they most likely not wait for the product to get restocked and buy it from another store.

RPA can limit stock outs through accurate data collection of inventory, easy system integration for fast data exchange between various tools, automating ordering process, tracking stock outs, and forecasting sales data to determine purchasing pattern of customers.

Through this retailers are able to determine re-order point and use automation software technology to order the right merchandise at the right time.

2. Tracking the deadstock - Deadstock are the products that retailers have failed to sell and have very less possibilities of being sold out in future.

If these products are not tracked and removed out of the inventory, can pile up and occupy space on the shelves or in the warehouse.

As RPA automation is incredibly flexible, developers can program bots to take specific actions when certain criteria are satisfied and assist in automatically getting rid of deadstock.

3. Reducing the lead time- Lead time is the amount of time between ordering merchandise and its arrival in the warehouse. Based upon the intricacy of the supply chain lead time can have a major impact on the business effectiveness. RPA can reduce the lead time by automating data entry, tracking minimal stock levels, automatic re-stocking order, communicating with the suppliers, invoice processing and payments.

RPA can assist retailers in reducing lead time, and since it doesn’t requires any programming to be applied it can be used quickly and effectively.

4. Handling the inventory discrepancies- A common issue faced by retailers is an inventory discrepancy, which can occur for a number of reasons when actual on-hand stock differs from quantity reported by the inventory system. Inventory discrepancies lead to overstocking and lost sales if they are not adequately controlled and go undetected.

RPA software can limit inventory discrepancies through recording correct data during receiving stock, tracking and recording damaged and returned stock, eliminating human error during stock take process, focusing the use of correct units of measurement and automatic update of the inventory system.

Our support in RPA implementation in your retail business

At Eastern Software Systems, we provide end-to-end robotic process automation services, where we handle functional and technological aspects, resulting in high business value. With our experience from working with many retail companies globally, as RPA service providers we are able to guide your company through the entire process of RPA implementation. Contact us now to book your slot for RPA consultation at marketing@essindia.com.