Is Inventory Management as important as Inventory Control?

As a business owner, you require an inventory management system that insures the next order you place is the right quantity both for your customers and for your business.

Frankly, without an inventory management system you do not know whether or not the next order that your Buyer or even you place, will result in excess stock or a stock out.

An effective inventory management system:

• Identifies the most important items through a classification process so that the time spent managing items yields the maximum results
• Generates accurate statistical forecasts
• Allows manual forecast adjustments where required
• Measures the risk factors in the supply chain
• Sets optimal safety stock levels to cover the risk
• Calculates optimal ordering levels
• Generates optimal replenishment orders

But that is only the start of the process and this is where an inventory management system plays a key role.

• Due to changes in customer demand patterns, forecast variances must be used to highlight where forecasts must be adjusted – the sooner the better.
• Further forecast adjustments will be required to accommodate the impact of lost customers as well as new customers
• Supply factors such as lead times and minimum order quantities will change
• All of the above must dynamically adjust the safety stock levels
• The re-order (‘minimum’) level and  order-up-to (‘maximum’) levels must automatically adjust to accommodate these changes

The management system must include an inventory specific dashboard to prioritize and:

• Identify stock-outs – the most critical of all problems
• Identify potential stock-out items so that you can pro-actively respond and prevent further stock-outs
• Identify purchase orders that due to changes in demand are now surplus to requirements
• Calculate and identify excess stock items

With the right inventory management system, all of the above will be achieved in the minimum of time and with the least effort.

So, what do Inventory Control Systems do?

They include Warehouse management systems to track the movement of inventory through the full warehouse cycle from:

• Receiving to
• Binning to
• Picking to
• Shipping

Other key requirements include:

• Stock taking
• Cycle counting
• Space and volume planning
• People
• Fulfillment times
• Bar-coding systems
• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems
• Real time recording of transactions

As important as all these inventory control measures are, they do not place you, the owner or manager in the position of knowing what inventory levels and how much safety stock is appropriate for your business. Placing the next order without this insight is simply a guessing game.

It is obvious that the inventory management and inventory control systems are both very important to any business and that they fulfill totally different requirements. One without the other will result is poor inventory performance of this valuable asset.

Sage Evolution V7 Release!

Sage Pastel Accounting has launched Sage Evolution 7, bringing customers a new version of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite that delivers the efficiencies and productivity gains offered by the latest mobile and cloud technologies.

With Sage Evolution 7, Sage Pastel Accounting has moved onto a new Delphi XE5 technology platform to ensure your investment in the software will be safe for many years into the future. Drawing extensively on customer feedback, Sage Pastel Accounting has built the new version of the software to help you increase productivity, reduce the margin of error, and eliminate unnecessary duplication of work.

Says Sage Pastel Accounting managing director Steven Cohen: "Our product team looked closely at the latest industry trends as well as customer feedback and business requirements to design a new platform that will evolve alongside your business well into the future. We have especially taken note of how many of our clients rely on cloud services and mobile devices in their day-to-day operations. Our new ERP solution has been designed to make it easy for your end-users to be productive wherever they are, while providing a smooth road into an increasingly mobile and cloud-driven future."

One of the key enhancements available in the new version of Sage Evolution is a Mobile Module that allows the sales force to capture sales orders on tablet devices. The data syncs with the ERP solution, eliminating the need to recapture data and reducing the margin of human error. 

Recognising that mobile and cloud access to the applications opens new security risks, Sage Pastel Accounting has further tightened the security features of the software in the new version. You can now use more complex passwords or biometric identification (thumb or fingerprints) to protect your accounts. In addition, Document Profiles allow you to control which data and information different users in the organisation may access.

"Featuring an all-new technology platform and including a range of enhancements to the user experience, this is a key release for us," says Mohammed Mosam, Sage Pastel's Product Manager for Sage Evolution. "With Sage Evolution, you can focus on running your business according to your business rules and accounting, while knowing that our software helps you to minimise errors and duplication of effort while maximising productivity and efficiency."

Sage Evolution 7 also boasts a wealth of new usability features to help you work faster and more accurately. Sage Evolution has taken the opportunity to give the software a new look and feel by changing the icons to create a more user-friendly interface. The icons were selected to represent the different modules more effectively and assist users to easily navigate their way around the software.

Some of the other features and functions in Sage Evolution 7 that will help you enhance productivity and save time include:

• An Auto Text feature, similar to predictive text in smartphones, which saves time spent typing in common phrases and words.
• A Global Search feature that makes it fast and easy to find transactions by value, category and date.
• The Utilities function, which allows you to make quick changes to selected transactional data such as invoices. All changes are recorded in a log file to be viewed and reviewed again.
•  Key Performance Indicators Dashboards that present transactional information in a graphical format.
•  Support for an unlimited number of financial years so that you can keep your financial records for as long as you want to
•  Visual reports – this amazing new feature is a pivot table, allowing you to mix and match information to display the results as you would like to see it visually with full drill-down functionality.