Choosing more than one path for marketing feels like a daunting task at first. 

We all can agree to this.

But when you decide to use two social media platforms, connect multiple accounts, and put your best foot forward to increase your brand’s reach, everything starts falling in place.

It may demand a different brand version in multi-channel marketing, but it’s all worth it. You can automate every process from inventory management to tracking shipped products.

Multi-channel inventory management is one such bonus that streamlines all your inventory tasks and activities.

What Is Multichannel Inventory Management?

Multi-channel is the future of marketing. The earlier you accept this truth, the better your business will be. 

Multi-channel inventory management is a process that looks after your listed products, inventory, assesses re-orders, and monitors stock levels across different channels or platforms.

As per IBM, 28% of companies lack inventory visibility across stores, warehouses, and vendors. 

For most retailers, it’s hectic to keep 100% inventory controls on one single platform. Maintaining a centralized view of inventory is crucial so you can create seamless experiences for your customers.

Nowadays, your customers need timely products without any delay or complexity. Multichannel inventory management acts as a catalyst that enhances your results. You interact with your audience through different touch-points on different platforms and improve your brand’s reach.

Why Do You Need It?

It structures all your processes for profit and success. Want to know how?

Multi-channel marketing doesn’t mean being on 100 platforms; it means focusing on two things:

• The platforms that work best for you and your customers (for selling)
• How you can automate processes for best results on each platform

Hands down, this process works best for handling all your backend processes. It takes inventory management, inventory visibility, shipping mistakes and reduces the chances of inefficient fulfillment.

This eventually helps you to focus more on in-house processes like email marketing and ad campaigns.

Here are five reasons that will convince you to buy in multi-channel inventory management:

• Real-time Visibility

Forrester states that 56% of consumers have used their mobile devices to choose products at home. Also, 38% use their mobile device to check inventory availability.

What do you often think when these stats come in front of you? As a business owner, you can think of building product listings, practical usage of descriptions, or focusing on SEO.

We understand that these attributes can help you get in front of that 56% of consumers.

But here’s the deal: people want to look at what you have prepared for them. Don’t delay or postpone it. Multi-channel inventory management helps you avoid a bad customer experience and ensures real-time visibility for new products or sales.

Customers can check out of stock options or newly available options. Being clear on your part helps shoppers turn to your sites and lock the deal as soon as possible.

• Demand Forecasting

You’re on the right track if you can find a way to scale your inventory management plans. 

One of the cornerstones of powerful multi-channel inventory management is demand forecasting. To manage inventory effectively, consider factors like prior sales data, shipping, handling costs, manufacturing, and Profit margins to optimize your inventory management system.

For example, certain products’ demand may decline in one season, but others can experience a boost in different seasons. In this case, it is good to recognize the trends or products and demand forecasting helps in doing so.

Investing in demand forecasting can increase profits, sales, and brands’ position in the marketplace.

• Choose The Right Location For Inventory

Choosing the right location for inventory can directly improve your customer experience and ensure good relationships with your vendors or retailers.

If multichannel listing is on your mind, then it’s good to split your stocks at different locations for workforce availability, good skills, and costs. Nowadays, customers are direct and demanding on every platform. It becomes crucial for your brand to show up at the right time.

Take the example of accessibility; multi-channel inventory management helps you to choose the best connectivity area for perfect shipping. Also, factors like weather conditions and environmental considerations significantly impact your inventory processes, storage, or management.

• Data Integration

The right system will always have integration of the best processes. With the help of multi-channel listings and good inventory management software—your brand will be unstoppable.

Today’s buyers are curious, on-time, and want the process to be seamless and less time-consuming. Using data integration gives you the freedom and flexibility to automate all your data, processes.

Mainly, it syncs all your data, updates products, inventory behind the scenes, and expedites all the processes.

• Supply Chain Automation

As per Entrepreneur magazine, 88% of consumers are ready to pay for faster delivery services. 

To maximize reach and visibility, supply chain automation is a vital process. It’s best to harness the power of marketplaces and booming artificial intelligence. Supply chain automation is a holy grail, whether it’s picking or packing, order fulfillment, multiple channel listings, or customer expectations fulfillment.

It helps you encapsulate all the above benefits in one package and make intelligent decisions for your business investments. Where should you invest more? Which process is lacking automation, and what does your customer wants more?

Ask these questions, and you are already ahead of your competitors.

Conclusion

To conclude, multi-channel inventory management is not that easy task still is a blessing in disguise. 

If done efficiently, inventory management can change the course of your e-commerce business. 

It’s better to converse with your audience in the most effective way to build trust over time. Multi-channel is the way to reduce the communication gap and maintain a healthy relationship with your customers.