Herb Billings, Vice President, Technology Strategy at Datascan, is back alongside host Tyler Kern for another episode of Herb’s Hot Takes – this time diving into the measurable negative effects organizations can experience when they exhibit poor inventory accuracy.
Every retailer the world over is affected by inventory accuracy either positively or negatively. As we learned in the first episode of Herb’s Hot Takes, those retailers that pay close attention to their inventory and conduct accurate counts can realize significant bottom-line benefits.
However, the opposite is also true. There are five clear impacts of poor inventory accuracy – lost sales, lost customers, increased inventory costs, wasted labor and lower employee morale.
This is especially true in an age where omnichannel strategies are becoming more critical every day. Traditionally, retailers would either have an item or not, and they could potentially call another location to verify that an item is in stock for a customer to pick up there.
This manual verification hid the actual inaccuracies behind the scenes of many retailers – inaccuracies that the omnichannel world of today is exposing in droves.
Retailers can respond, but it takes a greater commitment to inventory accuracy and to leveraging data in a more insightful way to make it happen.
