It is a common observation by industry experts that leather manufacturing companies, which manage their inventory technologically drive more profits, enjoy improved relationships with suppliers, and have higher customer satisfaction ratios. Managing inventory manually is a challenging task leaving behind a great scope of errors. Therefore, companies are introducing technology in this arena in the form of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software systems. This software helps in managing different functions of a business including inventory. Of late, leather manufacturing companies and SMEs are aiming at gaining a competitive advantage and running the business efficiently by using the inventory module of the ERP.
What is the Inventory Module of ERP?
To define simply, the inventory module of the ERP allows businesses to get necessary and accurate information related to inventory at any point in time, which helps in minimizing their overhead costs and overtake common inventory challenges faced at various stages of production. With a robust ERP system in place, a leather manufacturing unit always remains in the position to take viable and profitable business decisions.
Webcity Technologies LLP is a leading company offering customized ERP systems to different scales of companies. It ensures to offer the user-driven and highly dynamic feature in its inventory module. Some of the salient features of the module are as follows:
1. Unit Conversions: In leather manufacturing companies, raw material needs to be labeled in more than one unit. This is one of the real-time inventory challenges where companies need to buy raw materials in one unit and use them in another. Such complexities ERP module easily handles with its unit conversion feature. The ERP inventory module gives leverage to the company to manage and quantify the unit of raw materials as per their requirements.
2. Re-Order Level: A company needs to maintain the minimum level of stock to continue its production and simultaneously needs to decide the threshold for the maximum stock to reduce its wastage and capital blockage. With the ERP Re-Order Level feature, the company can ensure that it will never run out of stock, and get to know the right time to replenish the stock and in the right quantities by setting the re-order level.
3. User-Defined Raw Material Profiling: Allow your suppliers to easily identify raw materials by defining distinguishing features of the stock such as color, photos, weight, etc. This feature is extremely helpful when a company sources multiple products with little differences from suppliers by highlighting their unique features. It easily segregates raw materials and ensures smooth supplier management. It is dynamic also as a user can create raw material profiling based on his requirements.
4. Visual Images of Raw Materials: This feature is extremely helpful for end-users as well as suppliers as they can easily identify raw materials based on photos. Even purchase order comprises photographs of raw material for maintaining clarity in transactions.
5. Raw Material Certification: Reduce the chances of rejection of orders due to poor quality raw material by using the raw material certification feature. This feature ensures production will start only when you receive certified raw materials from your suppliers. This reduces wastage and even alerts suppliers to deal with certified raw materials as per the company’s requirements to ensure smooth business relations.
6. Setting & Revisions in Purchase and Costing Price: With this feature, users can easily set a defined supplier price and cost price in the ERP inventory module. Besides setting the price, the module allows price revision also, which is the amount over the pre-defined limits. However, it is an approval-based feature, which seeks permission from the admin before completing transactions with the revised prices.
7. User-Defined Reporting: This feature generates accurate and insightful reports such as stock consumption, maximum usage of which stock month-on-month basis, item-wise profitability, etc., that help in keeping a close watch on the stock consumption and managing inventory more efficiently. The ERP also shares suggestions regarding the maximum usage of the raw material so that the company always maintains an adequate stock of it to ensure flawless production.
8. Purchase Order (PO) Tracker: Companies raise purchase orders in two ways: order-based purchasing (BOM) and direct purchasing. This PO tracker gives the flexibility to create the raw material reserve for previous orders and ensure smooth production without any breaks. This helps in maintaining transparency between companies and suppliers. It even sends alerts or notifications regarding PO is raised, how much quantity of raw material is required, and many more. This feature is highly user-controlled and color-coded which shared valuable pieces of information with suppliers and other parties discreetly. For instance, the red color signifies complete delivery of products and the yellow color implies the delivery will take place in the next 10 days, and so on.
9. Supplier Performance Tracking & Handling: With the supplier performance feature, it is easier to track the performance of suppliers, handle them and shortlist them based on their purchase orders. Insightful reports such as which supplier delivers the inventory on time, which suppliers’ material is rejected due to certification issues, etc., help companies to keep relationships with reputed and professional suppliers only.
10. Purchase Order Balancing: Send either a notification email or SMS alert and keep your suppliers informed beforehand about the current status of the Purchase Order: completely balanced or partially balanced. Informing suppliers based on balancing status help in reducing the waiting time and continuing production without any delay.
11. Customize Purchase Order Printing: Give your suppliers the flexibility to maintain their unique format for creating a purchase order. It is a user-controlled feature where they can design the contents of purchase with photos, rate to mention and make changes as per their requirements.
So, give your business a competitive advantage by implementing customized ERP systems. For more details about the inventory module and its unique features, contact Webcity Technologies LLP today.