Top Multichannel Inventory Challenges and Solutions

When you make your product available across multiple channels, the chances of your product being sold increase exponentially. Your product is exposed and accessible to more people; various types of customers view your product and earning potential increases. However, as with every growth opportunity, expanding your brand across multiple channels has unique challenges.

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Making your product available across multiple channels will ensure you encounter some challenges many sellers face. Understanding and predicting these challenges will help you alleviate them and be prepared for them.

Multichannel Inventory Challenges

The main challenge in making your product available across multiple channels is in the form of inventory. You will have to manage them, foresee possible obstacles and roadblocks, and ensure that you are prepared for them well in advance.

The most common challenges in managing inventory according to their respective channels are the following:

• No optimized selling
• Incorrectly calculating stocks during offers
• Lack of visible inventory
• No logistics for reverse orders
• Not tapping on sales patterns

Let’s discuss them individually.

No Optimized Selling

One of the significant challenges of managing inventory across multiple channels is overselling or underselling. You will have to optimize your inventory based on the sales channel it is meant for. If you don’t do that and oversell, the most common error is that you might sell the same product to two customers. Not optimizing your inventory can result in cancellations, unnecessary delays in order delivery, and, worst, dissatisfied customers. On the other hand, if you overstock your product and undersell, you might lose revenue and incur losses that limit your future costs.

Incorrectly Calculating Stocks During Offers

Different sales channels have their guidelines, especially during campaigns and offers. For example, some sales channels might ask you to accurately record and report your stock availability during promotions and offers. If you don’t do that, they can heavily penalize you. Consequently, you must pay extra attention to your stocks across all sales channels, especially during promotions and offers.

If your logistics process is outsourced, they must follow the same vigilance. You will have to ensure that the logistics company is aware of these requirements and act accordingly. You will also have to ensure that you update them with your stock details regularly.

Lack of Visible Inventory

When your product is available across multiple channels, your customer could be ordering from any of these channels. So, you will have to ensure that you keep tabs on all your inventories across every channel continuously. If you track your inventory manually, you might not have a complete view of all your products, which hampers your operations. That results in stocks not being assigned, stocks being mishandled, and other similar issues.

No Logistics for Reverse Orders

If you don’t have a process such as reverse flow logistics, it might negatively impact your customer’s experience. Furthermore, this might lead to inaccuracies in your inventory calculation. A smooth shopping experience is a priority for most of the customers. Not implementing a process to accurately manage your canceled, returned, or exchanged products adversely impacts the customer experience.

Not Tapping on Sales Patterns

You must have access to your sales data across multiple channels. You need to review it periodically to spot trends in sales across channels. For example, your online sales could have shot exponentially during the lockdown and balanced out after the restriction was lifted. If you cannot manage inventory successfully or read the sales data accurately, you might miss these sales trends and patterns. You could miss out on potential revenue for a simple lack of accurate inventory management.

Solutions for Multichannel Inventory Challenges

There are multiple challenges when you take your product to multiple channels. Likewise, some solutions will ensure that you can overcome these challenges and continue your journey smoothly. Some companies have a third-party inventory management system with multiple features. However, if you want to make your product popular across multiple channels, a more feasible way is to have one cohesive platform to manage your eCommerce generated through multiple channels. Such a platform will have its inbuilt system to manage and route your inventory. Consequently, you can consider increasing your revenue and not waste unnecessary resources in inventory management.

 
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The following are the solutions to overcome your multichannel eCommerce inventory challenges:

• Ensure that your inventory is centralized
• Use analytics and reports
• Utilize the innovations and customizations available

Let’s look at these solutions individually.

Ensure that Your Inventory is Centralized

Thanks to the current cloud-based environment, you can have all your inventory data at a centralized location. Doing that ensures that your inventory details are regularly synced so the data is error-free and always up to date. You can always track your inventory in real-time, receive notifications about the quantity of stock, and manage reverse logistics throughout all the channels where your product is available.

Use Analytics and Reports

Your product quantity and form change across multiple channels and sales seasons. You should have a system to monitor sales trends across all channels and during specific seasons. This monitoring will help you figure out what sales trend is working for you and what is not. You must be able to get relevant data and have the wherewithal to analyze and process that data. Once analyzed, you should be able to tweak your sales plans accordingly.

Through tools such as Inbound Stock Planning, you can always track your inventory and plan. That planning will help you to be prepared for different sales patterns. You can track your yearly sales data, spot the trend, and plan your inventory accordingly. After that, you can vary your stocking according to the season sales and avoid overstocking or understocking.

Utilize the Innovations and Customizations Available

You can customize your inventory system according to your requirements to better manage your inventory system across multiple channels. You can add workflows to your system, like only sourcing the required inventory quantities. Furthermore, it ensures that the product is directly shipped to the customer to avoid the unnecessary cost of storing it.

You can use innovations such as temporarily boosting the stock of certain products across specific channels to combat out-of-stock scenarios. However, you will have to ensure that you can deliver these products on time, as delayed delivery adversely impacts customer satisfaction.

Conclusion:

Making your product available across multiple channels is an amazing opportunity to boost your sales, make your brand name known, and reach out to customers across a wider area. In the last few years, more and more businesses have started moving towards this approach to increase revenue and generate more business. Nevertheless, you cannot ignore inventory management if you want to be successful across multiple channels. You must have a strong grip on managing your inventory across all the channels where your product is available. Failing to do that will ensure that you have insurmountable obstacles on your path.

 
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The idea, then, is to research, plan, and implement all your strategies well ahead so that when your first sales season comes up, you are prepared for it well ahead. Your inventory is managed, products are stocked accurately, and your strategies to meet over or under-sell is in place.

About XPDEL:

XPDEL helps eCommerce brands accelerate their growth, empowering them with multichannel 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.