What is inventory management?
When selling products on a webshop, there must be inventory management so that you only sell products that are in stock or can be quickly ordered.
For a small webshop with few products and few orders, inventory management is less critical as the owner has a good handle on the items. As soon as volume and stock increase, you can quickly lose the overview.
This is where an inventory system and inventory management come into play.
The inventory system will keep track of how many of each item are in stock, but it will also track where the item is located in the warehouse, e.g., Hall 1, Shelf 5, Rack 2.
This becomes a great help for those packing orders to know exactly where the product is located.
Inventory Handling
When a product is ordered on a webshop, an order is created. Upon this action, one or more items are reserved in stock to avoid selling them to others. Once the item is packed and payment is captured on the order, the item is deducted from stock and is no longer reserved but sold.
This action is usually performed in the webshop, but the order can also be forwarded to an inventory system where this process can also take place.
Examples of inventory systems include Rackbeat, Lagersystem.dk, and Smartpack. See more under integrations.
Multiple Webshops and Inventory Systems
As soon as you start selling in multiple markets (countries), it is not certain that individual inventory systems can support multiple webshops via their integration. This is where Indexed PIM often enters the picture as the platform that can function as the link between webshops and the inventory system.
Products are created and managed centrally in PIM, which ensures that product data and inventory are kept updated across all connected systems.