Distributed Inventory: Why You Need it & How it Helps

 
Distributed inventory, as we know it, is segmenting your products across various strategically placed fulfillment centers to keep inventory and stock closer to the consumer so that it’s ready to be shipped after order placement. It helps reach the customer faster at a cheaper shipping cost. As opposed to maintaining a single, centralized inventory, it helps brands reduce shipping costs and deliver more quickly by keeping products in strategic and optimal locations for the business.
 

 
If efficient inventory management is what your business needs for growth, then distributed inventory has to be your answer. As the name suggests, distributed inventory is a timesaving and competent distribution of all the inventories that need to reach retailers in different shipments. These shipments, when sent separately, meet the needs of the retailer while enabling the distributor to have better control over product distribution. Distributed Inventory can significantly ensure smooth supply chain management, thus making your business more organized and profitable.
 
Since distributed inventory leveraged a kind of hub and spoke structure, the resultant procedure is highly effective at inventory management. The presence of multiple independent warehouses ensures uninterrupted product distribution even when the demand peaks for a particular product. Itis easily achievable when there’s steady coordination amongst the various warehouses or fulfillment centers.
 
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Whether you are a distributor just starting or a supply chain manager responsible for smooth inventory management at a big eCommerce company, your primary objective is to ensure customer satisfaction through timely delivery. Achieving this eCommerce fulfillment through managing the supply chain with efficiency is not an easy task at hand. To start with, as your business expands, so does your supply chain. Mistakes made in logistics, when added to this, can make inventory management a very complicated issue. Here is where working with a 3PL that has multiple warehouses to aid distributed inventory can be the right inventory management solution that you have been looking for. It’s critical to know the role that 3PL can play in boosting your eCommerce business.
 

 
Now that we have seen how distributed inventory helps, here are five scenarios where distributed inventory can be a game-changer for your business:

• Are Your Products Substantially Heavy?
  Heavy shipments cost more. You can effectively control the resultant spike in your expenditure witha distributed inventory. If your best-selling products are already near your customers, the cost involved in shipping those, no matter how hefty each product is, significantly reduces. With multiple fulfillment centers involved, you can ensure that your products are always closer to your consumer bases, and you can save on your shipping cost.
• Are Your Shipments Mostly Voluminous?
  While it’s fine to start with a single warehouse, once your supply chain grows significantly, you might be spending more on shipping costs than you would have on renting multiple warehouses. Identify this as the juncture where your business requires distributed inventory to grow further. Segmenting the stock at hand across multiple warehouses will not just bring down your shipping cost but also, when thought through, can lend you the additional advantage of being geographically closer to your consumer base. Such a step will readily increase your eCommerce fulfillment as now the product will require even lesser time to reach your end consumer. Identifying zones where certain products sell better and storing them at warehouses nearer to those places will catapult your business to success through smooth product fulfillment. We all know eCommerce fulfillment is crucial to any business now, which is a sure-shot way to achieve it.
• Are Your Customers Scattered Across Multiple Locations?
  As your business grows and your product acquires popularity, you will find customers from far and near wanting to access your product as soon as possible. When a warehouse location is close to the consumer base, and your products are stored at multiple locations, efficient handling of the product distribution is a necessity. Without product fulfillment, it’s not easy to convert new buyers into regular customers. It makes the requirement for multiple warehouses crucial for your business.
• Do You Want to Gain a Leverage Over Your Competitors?
  E-commerce is a highly competitive turf. E-commerce fulfillment is often the key to keeping your consumer base satisfied. With every other player promising two-day delivery, you better not lag. Sometimes, even when the product is top-class, a business might lose profit because of inefficient product fulfillment. Distributed inventory with multiple fulfillment centers becomes your go-to inventory management solution in such a scenario. It’s only with the help of 3PL and outsourcing that you can ensure your product reaches your customer in the shortest possible time frame.
• Do You Want Your Business to be Least Affected by External Factors?
  Bad weather conditions, transport strikes, and political unrests are not in your hands for you to control them. Unfortunately, these factors can affect your supply management for days. Our recent experience during the pandemic-induced lockdowns has taught us to be cautious and to execute supply management that would be least impacted by adverse external factors.
   
  Multiple warehouses across different locations can be one of the ways to confront such a situation efficiently. Even if a warehouse stands affected by a natural calamity or an accident, this way, you’ll have products distributed across other fulfillment centers and which you can now use to ensure eCommerce fulfillment despite the crisis at hand.

 
XPDEL is on a mission to enable growth for eCommerce companies. We focus both on improving sales channels and operating costs. We are a technology-driven supply chain management company with data analytics at the heart of our services.
 
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We ensure we fulfill your customers’ orders with the utmost care by managing and optimizing your inventory and helping you keep your fulfillment and shipping costs low. Our goal is to provide outstanding service, so you have the peace of mind to focus on your business growth.
 

 
To sum it up, inventory management is crucial to your eCommerce business, and you must make an informed decision, keeping in mind the geographical proximity to your consumers and the shipping costs involved. Outsourcing to a 3PL and opting for distributed inventory will help you on both accounts.
 
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Thus, there are multiple ways in which Distributed Inventory might help to boost your business growth. Multiple warehouses will ensure that your product reaches your consumers the fastest. Keep the shipping charges incurred by your business, the rent of the warehouses, and most importantly, their proximity to your strongest consumer bases in mind to ensure smooth, timely, and cost-efficient supply chain management.
 
Partner with XPDEL to focus on your core competency and keep your customers happy.
 

 
XPDEL helps eCommerce brands accelerate their growth, empowering them with multi-channel fulfillment, whether shipping directly to consumers, delivering to businesses, or selling through retail stores. We are founded and operated by veterans with experience from Amazon, FedEx, UPS, JDA, Walmart, Target, and other leading companies in eCommerce and Retail. Guided by these experts, we provide customer experiences that help you grow your business.